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i. 

THE PROFITS 
OF RELIGION 



L An Essay in Economic 

Interpretation 



i 
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By UPTON SINCLAIR 




Published by the Author, Pasadena, California || 

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Cororrsght, 1918. by UPTON SINCLAIR 

Copyright in Great Britain and 

Dejjeadencies, and Continental Countries 

All Rights Reserved 






The Profits of Religion 



OFFERTORY 



This book is a study of Supernaturalism 
from a new point of view — as a Source of In- 
come and a Shield to Privilege. I have 
searched the libraries through, and no one has 
done it before. If you read it, you will see 
that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty- 
five years of thought and a year of investiga- 
tion. It contains the facts. 

I publish the book myself, so that it may be 
available at the lowest possible price. I am 
giving my time and energy, in return for one 
thing which you may give me — the joy of 
speaking a true word and getting it heard. 

The present volume is the first of a series, 
which will do for Education, Journalism and 
Literature what has here been done for the 
Church: the four volumes making a work of 
revolutionary criticism, an Economic Interpre- 
tation of Culture under the general title of 
"The Dead Hand." 



CONTENTS 



Introductory 

Bootstrap-lifting 11 

Religion 16 

Book One: The Church of the Conquerors 

The Priestly Lie 21 

The Great Fear , 24 

Salve Regina! , .' . . 27 

Fresh Meat 28 

Priestly Empires 31 

Prayer-wheels . , 33 

The Butcher-Gods , 35 

The Holy Inquisition , 38 

Hell-fire 41 

Book Two: The Church of Good Society 

The Rain Makers 47 

The Babylonian Fire-God 50 

The Medicine-men 52 

The Canonization of Incompetence 55 

Gibson's Preservative 58 

The Elders. , = 62 

Church History 66 

Land and Livings 68 

Graft in Tail 71 

Bishops and Beer 73 

Anglicanism and Alcohol 76 

Dead Cats 80 

"Suffer Little Children" 84 

The Court-circLilar 89 

Horn-blowing 92 

Trinity Corporation 94 

Spiritual Interpretation 97 

Vil 



Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls 

Chanty 105 

God's Armor 109 

Thanksgivings 113 

The Holy Roman Empire 115 

Temporal Power 118 

Knights of Slavery 120 

Priests and Police 122 

The Church Militant 125 

The Church Triumphant 128 

God in the Schools 131 

The Menace 133 

King Coal 137 

The Unholy Alliance 141 

Secret Service 144 

Tax Exemption 146 

Holy History 148 

Das Centrum 152 

Book Four: The Church of the Slavers 

The Face of Caesar 161 

Deutscnland ueber Alles 163 

Der Tag 164 

King Cotton 167 

Witches and Women 170 

Moth and Rust 173 

To Lyman Abbott , 176 

The Octopus 180 

The Industrial Shelley 183 

The Outlook for Graft, . , , 187 

Clerical Camouflage 191 

The Jungle 195 

Book Five: The Church of the Merchants 

The Head Merchant 201 

"Herr Be^ble" 203 

Holy Oilo 207 

Rhetorical Black-hanging 212 

The Great American Fraud 214 

Riches in Glory 217 

viii 



Captivating Ideals , 219 

Spook Hunting 222 

Running the Rapids 225 

Birth Control 227 

Sheep 230 

Book Six: The Church of the Quacks 

Tabula Rasa 237 

The Book of Mormon 239 

Holy Rolling 242 

Bible Prophecy 245 

Koreshanity 248 

Mazdaznan 250 

Black Magic 253 

Mental Malpractice 257 

Science and Wealth 261 

New Nonsense 264 

^'Dollars Want Me!" 267 

Spiritual Financiering , 270 

The Graft of Grace 273 

Book Seven: The Church of the Socialr Revolution 

Christ and Caesar 281 

Locusts and Wild Honey 284 

Mother Earth 287 

The Soap Box 290 

The Church Machine 292 

The Church Redeemed 296 

The Desire of Nations. 300 

The Knowable 302 

''Nature's Insurgent Son". . „ 305 

The New Moral,f.v 308 

Envoi 311 



IX 



INTRODUCTORY 



Bootstrap-lifting 

Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader. 

It is a vision I have seen : upon a vast plain, men and 
women are gathered in dense throngs, crouched in un- 
comfortable and distressing positions, their fingers 
hooked in the straps of their boots. They are engaged in 
lifting themselves ; tugging and straining until they grow 
red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams 
from their foreheads, they show every symptom of dis- 
tress ; the eyes of all are fixed, not upon each other, nor 
upon their boot-straps, but upon the sky above. There 
is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and then, 
amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement 
and triumph. 

I approach one and say to him, "Friend, what is this 
you are doing?" 

He answers, without pausing to glance at me, "I am 
performing spiritual exercises. See how I rise?" 

"But," I say, "you are not rising at all !" 

Whereat he becomes instantly angry. "You are one 
of the scoffers !" 

"But, friend," I protest, "don't you feel the earth 
undier your feet?" 

"You are a materialist !" 

"But, friend, I can see — " 

"You are without spiritual vision!" 

11 



12 The Profits of Religion 

And so I move on among the sweating and groaning 
hordes. Being of a sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot 
help being distressed by the prevalence of this singular 
practice among so large a portion of the human race. 
How is it possible that none of them should suspect the 
futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I 
am uncomprehending? That in some way they are ac- 
tually getting off the ground, or about to get off the 
ground? 

Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding 
here and there among the bootstrap-lifters, approaching 
from the rear and slipping his hands into their pockets. 
The position of the spiritual exercisers greatly facilitates 
his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they do 
not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not 
heed him; he goes through their pockets at leisure, and 
transfers the contents to a bag he carries, and then moves 
on to the next victim. I watch him for a while, and 
finally approach and ask, "What are you doing, sir?" 

He answers, "I am picking pockets." 

"Oh," I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. 
"But — I beg pardon — are you a thief?" 

"Oh, no," hie answers, smilingly, "I am the agent of 
the Wholesale Pickpockets* Association. This is Pros- 
perity." 

"I see," I reply. "And these people let you — " 

"It is thie law," he says. "It is also the gospel." 

I turn, following his glance, and observe another per- 
son approaching — a stately figure, clad in scarlet and 
purple robes, moving with slow dignity. Hei gazes 
about at the sweating and grunting hordes; now and 
then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of benedic- 



The Profits of Religion 13 

tion, and proclaims in rolling tones, "Blessed are the 
Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." 
He moves on, and after a bit stops and announces again, 
"Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word 
that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets and priests 
of Bootstrap-lifting." 

Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one 
approach the agent of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Asso- 
ciation. The agent greets him as a friend, and proceeds 
to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes a gen- 
erous share of the loot which he has collected. The ma- 
jestic one does not cringe, nor does he make any effort 
to hide what is going on. On the contrary he cries 
aloud, "It is more blessed to give than to receive !" And 
again he cries, "The laborer is worthy of his hire !" And 
a third time he cries, yet more sternly, "Render unto 
Caesar the things which are Caesar's!" And the Boot- 
strap-lifters pause long enough to answer: "Lord have 
mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law !" 
Then they renew their straining and tugging. 

I step up, and in timid tones begin, "Reverend sir, 
will you tell me by what right you take this wealth ?" 

Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries 
in a voice of thunder, "Blasphemer !" And all the Boot- 
strap-lifters desist from their lifting, and menace me with 
furious looks. There is a general call for a policeman of 
the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall 
silent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep 
my thoughts to myself. 

Over the vast plain I wandier, observing a thousand 
strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of 
the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. There is, I discover, a 



14 The Profits of Religion 

regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago — no man 
can recall how far back — the Wholesale Pickpockets 
made the discovery of the ease with which a man's 
pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with 
spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for 
the best essays in support of the practice. Now their 
propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year 
we see an increase in the rewards and emoluments of 
the prophets and priests of the cult. The ground is cov- 
ered with stately temples of various designs, all of which 
I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting. I come 
li where a group of people are occupied in laying the 
corner-stone of a new white marble structure ; I inquire 
and am informed it is the First Church of Bootstrap- 
lifters, Scientist. As I staid watching, a card is handed 
to me, informing me that a lady will do my Bootstrap- 
lifting at five dollars per lift. 

I go on to another building, which I am told is a 
library containing volumes in defense of the Bootstrap- 
lifters, published under the auspices of the Wholesale 
Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless vistas of shelves, 
also several thousand current magazines and papers. I 
consult these — for my legs have given out in the effort to 
visit and inspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting prac- 
tice. I discover that hardly a week passes that some one 
does not start a new cult, or revive an old one ; if I had a 
hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and 
ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and 
liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Boot- 
strap-lifting. There are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lift- 
ers, whose priests are fed by Transubstantiation ; the 
established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests live 



The Profits of Religion 15 

by "livings" ; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters, whose preach- 
ers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There are 
Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk ; 
Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple 
auras; Mormon Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap- 
lifters, Spiritualist and Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dow- 
ieite. Holy Roller and Holy Jumper, Come-to-glory ne- 
gro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army bass- 
drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varie- 
ties of "New Thought" Bootstrap-lifters ; the mystic and 
transcendentalist, Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme 
Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard high-art Boot- 
strap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two bits 
apiece; the "uplift" and ''optimist," the Ralph Waldo 
Trine and Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with 
a hundred thousand volumes at one dollar per volume. 
There are the Platonist and Hegelian and Kantian pro- 
fessors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at 
several thousand dollars per year each. There are the 
Nietzschean Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the 
Superman, and the art-for-art*s-sake, neo-Pagan Boot- 
strap-lifters, who lift themselves down to the Ape. 

Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the 
priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers 
and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distin- 
guishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at 
their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now 
and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, 
of a purely symbolical character: as whien the Supreme 
Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a 
year to wash the feet of the poor ; or when the Sunday- 
school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters 



16 The Profits of Religion 

shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But 
for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap- 
lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so 
swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their 
bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to 
exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-eleva- 
tion, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets* Asso- 
ciation may ply their immemorial role with less chance of 
interference. 

Religion 

The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean 
to impugn the sincerity of all who preach the supremacy 
of the soul. No ; I admit the honesty of the heroes and 
madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher is that he 
shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him 
be tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like 
Nietzsche; let him stand upon a pillar and be devoured 
by worms like Simeon Stylites — on these terms I grant 
to any dreamer the right to hold himself above economic 
science. 

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange 
notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian 
ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade 
himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor con- 
cerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, 
when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we 
see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by 
unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we 
see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfort- 
able retainers of the rich ? What are we to say when we 
see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spir- 
itual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish pur- 



The Profits of Religion 17 

poses of class-cruelty and greed? What I say is — Boot- 
strap-lifting ! 

It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in 
two senses, one good and the other bad. Morality means 
the will to righteousness, or it means Anthony Com- 
stock; democracy means the rule of the people, or it 
means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word "Re- 
ligion". In its true sense Religion is the most funda- 
mental of the sours impulses, the impassioned love of 
life, the feeling of its preciousness, the desire to foster 
and further it. In that sense every thinking man must 
be religious ; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self- 
renewing force, the very nature of our being. In that 
sense I have no thought of assailing it, I would make 
clear that I hold it beyond assailment. 

But we arie denied the pleasure of using the word in 
that honest sense, because of another which has been 
given to it. To the ordinary man "Religion"' means, not 
the souFs longing for growth, the "hunger and thirst 
after righteousness", but certain forms in which this 
hunger has manifested itself in history, and prevails to- 
day throughout the world; that is to say, institutions 
having fixed dogmas and "revelations", creeds and rit- 
uals, with an administering caste claiming supernatural 
sanction. By such institutions the moral strivings of 
the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations 
of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade 
of ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book 
that "Religion" in this sense is a source of income to 
parasites, and the natural ally of every form of oppres- 
sion and exploitation. 

If by my jesting at "Bootstrap-lifting" I have wound- 



18 The Profits of Religion 

ed some dear prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor 
to speak in a more persuasive voice. I am a man who 
has suffered, and has seen the suffering of others ; I have 
devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the suffering, 
to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by 
any chance there be a way of escape for future genera- 
tions. I have found that the latter is the case; the suf- 
fering is needless, it can with ease and certainty be ban- 
ished from the earth. T know this with the knowledge 
of science — in the same way that the navigator of a ship 
knows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the 
compass to which he must steer in order to reach the port. 
Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the 
terrors of the cults of the unknown. The power which 
made us has given us a mind, and the impulse to its use ; 
let us see what can be done with it to rid the iearth of its 
ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset 
this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure 
you that I am no crude materialist, I am not so shallow 
as to imagine that our race will be satisfied with a bar- 
ren rationalism. I know that the old symbols came out 
of the heart of man because they corresponded to certain 
needs of the heart of man. I knov/ that new symbols 
will be found, corresponding more exactly to the needs 
of our time. If here I set to work to tear down an old 
and ramshackle building, it is not from blind destruct- 
fulness, but as an architect who means to put a new and 
sounder structure in its place. Before we part company, 
I shall submit the blue print of that new home of the 
spirit. 



BOOK ONE 

The Church of the Conquerors 

i saw the Conquerors riding by 

With trampling feet of horse and men : 
Empire on empire like the tide 

Flooded the world and ebbed again ; 

A thousand banners caught the sun, 
And cities smoked along the plain, 

And laden down with silk and gold 

And heaped up pillage groaned the wain. 

Kemp. 



19 



The Profits of Religion 21 



The Priestly Lie 

When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt 
of lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He 
had no conception of natural forces, of laws of electric- 
ity ; he saw this event as the act of an individual intelli- 
gence. To-day we read about fairies and demons, 
dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vul- 
can, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these 
as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind ; losing sight 
of the fact that they were originally meant with entire 
seriousness — that not merely did ancient man believe in 
them, but was forced to believe in them, because the 
mind must have an explanation of things that happen, 
and an individual intelligence was the only explanation 
available. The story of the hero who slays the devouring 
dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of 
summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the 
phenomena, it was the science of early times. 

Men imagined supernatural powers such as they 
could comprehiend. If the lightning god destroyed a hut, 
obviously it must be because the owner of the hut had 
given offense ; so the owner must placate the god, using 
those means which would be effective in the quarrels 
of men — priesents of roast meats and honey and fresh 
fruits, of wine and gold and jewels and women, accom- 
panied by friendly words and gestures of submission. 
And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not 
cease, when the people continued to die of pestilence, 
then came the opportunity for hysterical or ambitious 



22 The Profits of Religion 

persons to discover new ways of penetrating the mind 
of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and 
seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the 
entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds ; 
there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on 
mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged dis- 
ciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes 
of men and women, learned in these sacred matters ; and 
these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the im- 
portance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof 
from the common herd, endowed with special powers and 
entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the 
oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order ; 
they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants 
of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving 
his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in for- 
giving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving 
gifts. They would biecome makers of laws and moral 
codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish 
them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to 
impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, 
architecture and sculpture and painting, music and 
poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and 
gongs 

And stoned winaows richly dight, 

Casting a dim religious light. 

There let the pealing organ blow, 

To the full-voiced choir below, 

In service high and anthem clear, 

As may with sweetness through mine ear 

Dissolve me into ecstacies, 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes. 

So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and com- 



The Profits of Religion 23 

plicated forms, the Priestly Lie. There are a score of 
great religions in the world, each with scores or hun- 
dreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its compli- 
cated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has 
its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true 
believers" ; each damns all the others, with more or less 
heartiness — and each is a mighty fortress of Graft. 

There will be few readers of this book who have not 
been brought up under the spell of some one of these 
systems of Supernaturalism ; who have not been taught 
to speak with respect of some particular priestly order, 
to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek 
respite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial 
• Spell. These things are woven into our very fibre in 
childliood; they are sanctified by memories of joys and 
griefs, they are confused with spiritual struggles, they 
become part of all that is most vital in our lives. The 
reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their 
thrall will do well to begin with a study of the beliefs 
and practices of other sects than his own — a field where 
he is free to observe and examine without fear of sacri- 
lege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's "Secret 
Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled" — encyclopedias of the 
fantastic inventions which terror and longing have wrung 
out of the tortured soul of man. Here are mysteries and 
sokmnitiies, charms and spells, illuminations and trans- 
migrations, angels and demons, guides, controls and 
masters — all of which it is permissible to refuse to sup- 
port with gifts. Let the reader then go to James Free- 
man Clarke's "Ten Great Religions", and realize how 
many billions of humans have lived and died in the sol- 
emn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven 



24 The Profits of Religion 

depended upon their accepting certain ideas and prac- 
ticing certain rites, all mutually exclusive and incompat- 
ible, each damning the others and the followers of the 
others. So gradually the realization will come to him 
that the tiest of a doctrine about life and its welfare must 
be something else than the fact that one was born to it. 

The Great Fear 

It was not the fault of primitive man that he was 
ignorant, nor that his ignorance made him a prey to dread. 
The traces of his mental suffering will inspire in us only 
pity and sympathy ; for Nature is a grim school-mistress, 
and not all her lessons have yet been learned. We have 
a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread 
being diverted from its true function, a stimulus to a 
search for knowledge, and made into a means of clamp- 
ing down ignorance upon the mind of the race. That 
this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized 
Religion no candid student can deny. 

The first thing brought forth by the study of any 
religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, 
born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source 
from which its nourishment is derived. "The fear of 
divine anger", says Prof. Jastrow, "runs as an undercur- 
rent through the entire religious literature of Babylonia 
and Assyria." In the words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of 
ancient Nippur: 

Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven? 

The plan of a god is full of mystery — ^who can understand it? 

He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning. 

In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed. 

And that cry might be duplicated from almost any 
page of the Hebrew scriptures : the only difference being 



The Profits of Religion 25 

that the Hebrews combined all their fears into one Great 
Fear. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- 
dom," we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives; 
and the Psalmist repeats it. "Dominion and fear are with 
Him," cries Job. "How then can any man be just be- 
fore God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a 
woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and 
the stars are not pure in His sight : How much less man, 
that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?" 
He goes on, in his lyrical rapture, "Sheol is naked before 
Him, and Destruction hath no covering. . . . The pil- 
lars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His re- 
buke. . . . This thunder of His power who can under- 
stand?" That all this is some of the world's great poetry 
does not in the least alter the fact that it is an abasement 
of the soul, an hysterical perversion of the facts of life, 
and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of Priestcraft. 

The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama" : 
and what is the denouement of this drama, what is an- 
cient Hebrew wisdom's last word about life? "Where- 
fore I abhor myself," says Job, "and repent in dust and 
ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing ; we have been 
told at thie beginning that he "was perfect and upright, 
and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." But the 
Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and "the firie of God" 
falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his serv- 
ants, and "a great wind from the wilderness" kills his 
sons and daughters ; and then his body becomes covered 
with boils — a phenomenon caused in part by worry, and 
the consequent nervous indigestion, but mainly by excess 
of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the diet. Job, 
however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease. 



26 The Profits of Religion 

and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, 
and he sits among the ashes — a highly unsanitary pro- 
cedure enforced by his religious ritual. So naturally he 
feels like a worm, and abhors himself, and cries out : "I 
know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose 
of Thine can be restrained." By which utter, unreasoning 
humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and 
his friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven 
rams — a feast for a whole templeful of priests — and then 
"the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. . . . 
And after this Job lived an hundred and forty years, and 
saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four generations." 
You do not have to look very deeply into this "Wis- 
dom-drama" to find out whose wisdom it is. Confess 
your own ignorance and your own impotence, abandon 
yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred Caste, the Keep- 
ers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon and re- 
spite — in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from 
a psalm of the ancient Babylonians, which "heathen" 
chant is identical in spirit and purpose with the utter- 
ances of Job : 

The Sin that I have wrought, I know not; 
The unclean that I have eaten, I know not; 
The offense into which I have walked, I know not. . . . 
The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded mc; 
The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me; 
A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow. . . . 
I sought for help, but no one took my hand; 
I wept, but no one harkened to me. . . . 
The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them; 
To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer; 
O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my 

sacrifice; 
O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me, accept 

my sacrifice! 



The Peofits of Religion 27 

Salve Regina! 

And now let tne reader leap three thousand years of 
human history, of toil and triumph of the intellect of 
man; and instead of a Hebrew manuscript or a Baby- 
lonian brick there confronts him a little publication, 
printed on a modern rotary press in the capital of the 
United States of America, bearing the date of October, 
1914, and the title "Salve Regina". In it we find "a 
beautiful prayer", composed by the late cardinal Ram- 
polla ; we are told that "Pius X attached to it an indul- 
gence of 100 days, each time it is piously recited, appli- 
cable to the souls in purgatory." 

O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from^ 
Heaven, where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, 
your servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness. ... he 
blesses and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the 
most beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy 
holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real Mother 
of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin, as co-Re- 
demptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal Father 
who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word, etc. He 
blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts and thanks 
the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and merciful. . . . 
be pleased to accept this little homage of your servant, and 
obtain for him also from your divine Son pardon for his sins, 
Amen. 

And then, looking more closely, we discover the pur- 
pose of this "beautiful prayer", and of the neat little 
paper which prints it. "Salve Regina" is raising funds 
for the "National Shrine of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion", a home for more priests, and Catholic ladies who 
desire to collect for it may receive little books which 
they are requested to return within three months. Pius 
X writes a letter of warm endorsement, and sets an ex- 



28 The Profits of Religion 

ample by giving four hundred dollars "out of his poverty" 
— or, to be more precise, out of the poverty of the pitiful 
peasantry of Italy. There is included in the paper a form 
of bequest for "devoted clients of Our Blessed Mother", 
and at the top of the editorial page the most alluring of 
all baits for the loving hearts of the flock — that the names 
of deceased relatives and friends may be written in the 
collection books, and will be transferred to the records 
of the Shrine, and these persons "will share in all its spir- 
itual benefits". In the days of Job it was with threats 
of boils and poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained it- 
self ; but in the case of this blackest of all Terrors, trans- 
planted to our free Republic from the heart of the Dark 
Ages, the wretched victims see before their eyes the glare 
of flames, and hear the shrieks of their loved ones writh- 
ing in torment through uncounted ages and eternities. 

Fresh Meat 

In the days when I was experimenting with vegetar- 
ianism, I sought earnestly for evidence of a non-meat- 
eating race ; but candor compelled me to admit that man 
was like the monkey and the pig and the bear — he was 
vegetarian when he could not help it. The advocates of 
the reform insist that meat as a diet causes muddy 
brains and dulled nerves ; but you would certainly never 
suspect this from a study of history. What you find in 
history is that all men crave meat, all struggle for it, and 
the strongest and cleverest get it. Everywhere you find 
the subject classes living in the midst of animals which 
they tend, but whose flesh they rarely taste. Even in 
modern America, sweet land of liberty, our millions of 
tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and turkeys, and 
hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save 



i 



The Profits of Religion 29 



everything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the 
city. It would not be too much to say of the cultural rec- 
ords of early man that they all have to do, directly or 
indirectly, with the reserving of fresh meat to the mas- 
ters. In J. T. Trowbridge's cheerful tale of the adven- 
tures of Captain Seaborn, we are told by the cannibal 
priest how idol-worship has ameliorated the morals of 
the tribe — 

For though some warriors of renown 

Continue anthropophagous, 
*Tis rare that human flesh goes down 

The low-caste man's aesophagus! 

I suspect that we should have to go back to the days 
of the cave-man to find the first lover of the flesh-pots 
who put a taboo upon meat, and promised supernatural 
favors to all who would exercise self-control, and instead 
of consuming their meat themselves, would bring it and 
lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, wherie the god 
might come in the night-time and partake of it. Cer- 
tainly, at any rate, there are few religions of record in 
which such devices do not appear. The early laws of the 
Hebrews are more concerned with delicatessen for the 
priests than with any other subject whatever. Here, for 
example, is the way to make a Nazarite : 

He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of 
the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one ewe 
lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin offering, and 
one ram without blemish for peace offerings, and a basket of 
unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and 
wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oi^ and their meat 
offerings. 

And the law goes on to instruct the priests to take 
certain choice parts and "wave them for a wave offering 



30 The Profits of Religion 1 

before the Lord : this is holy for the priest." What was 
done with the other portions we are not told ; but earlier 
in this same "Book of Numbers" we find the general 
law that 

Every offering of all the holy things of the children of 
Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And ev- 
ery man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man 
giveth to the priest, it shall be his. | 

In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley 
that the priests of Ceylon first present the gifts to the 
god, and then eat them. Among the Parsees, when a man 
dies, the relatives must bring four new robes to the 
priests ; if they do this, the priests wear the robes ; if they 
fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judg- 
ment-throne. The devotees are instructed that "hie who 
performs this rite succeeds in both worlds, and obtains 
a firm footing in both worlds." Among the Buddhists, 
the followers give alms to the monks, and are told spe- 
cifically what advantages will thereby accrue to them. In 
the Aitareyo Brahmanam of the Rig-Veda we read 

He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is 
born from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates in 
the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred 
knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and 
is absorbed into the deity. 

Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks 
the haoma, or juice of a plant, considered to be both a 
plant and a god. Among the Episcopalians, a contem- 
porary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that of the 
grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what 
is left of it, but is ordered "reverently to consume it." In 
as much as the priest is the sole judge of how much good 



The Profits of Religion 31 

sherry wine he shall consecrate previous to the cere- 
mony, it is to be expected that the priests of this cult 
should be lukewarm towards the prohibition movement, 
and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament 
with unfermented and uninteresting grape-juice. 

Priestly Empires 

In every human society of which we have record 
there has been one class which has done the hard and 
exhausting work, the "hewers of wood and drawers of 
water" ; and there has been another, much smaller class 
which has done the directing. To belong to this latter 
class is to work also„but with the head instead of the 
hands; it is also to enjoy the good things of life, to live 
in the best houses, to eat the best food, to have choice of 
the most desirable women; it is to have leisure to culti- 
vate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire graces 
and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape 
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded — in 
short, to have Power. How to get this Power and to 
hold it has been the first object of the thoughts of men 
from the beginning of time. 

The most obvious method is by the sword; but this 
method is uncertain, for any man may take up a sword, 
and some may succeed with it. It will be found that 
empires based upon military force alone, however cruel 
they may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so 
dangerous to progress ; it is only when resistance is par- 
alyzed by the agency of Superstition, that the race can 
be subjected to systems of exploitation for hundreds and 
even thousands of years. The ancient empires were all 
priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyied 



32 The Profits of Religion 

the will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as 
the word of the gods. 

Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us: 

Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the Az- 
tecs. . . . Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by 
reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were en- 
abled to mould the young and plastic mind according to their 
own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence for re- 
ligion and its ministers. 

The historian goes on to indicate the economic har- 
vest of this teaching:* 

To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for 
the maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented 
by the policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under the 
last Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent, and 
covered every district of the empire. 

And this concerning the frightful system of human 
sacrifices, whereby the priestly caste maintained the pres- 
tige of its divinities : , 

At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486, 
the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the 
purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two 
miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and seventy 
thousand captives are said to have perished at the shrine of 
this terrible deity. 

The same system appears in Professor Jastrow's ac- 
count of the priesthood of Babylonia and Assyria : 

The ulti'mate source of all law being the deity himself, the 
original legal tribunal was the place where the image or sym- 
bol of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or omen, 
indicative of the will of the god. The power thus lodged in the 
priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous. They virtually 
held in their hands the life and death of the people. 

And of the business side of this vast religious system : 



The Profits of Religion 33 

The temples were the natural depositories of the legal arch- 
ives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably enor- 
mous proportions. Records were made of all decisions; the 
facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses. Business 
and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale were in like 
manner drawn up in the presence of official scribes, who were 
also priests. In this way all commercial transactions received 
the written sanction of the religious organization. The tem- 
ples themselves — at least in the large centres — entered into 
business relations with the populace. In order to maiatain the 
large household represented by such an organization as that of 
the temple of Enlil of Nippur, that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that 
of Marduk at Babylon, or that of Shamash at Sippar, large hold- 
ings of land were required which, cultivated by agents for the 
priests, or farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of 
the produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the 
temple officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded 
to the furnishing of loans at interest — in later periods, at 20% — 
to barter in slaves, to dealings. in lands, besides engaging labor 
for work of all kinds directly needed for the temples. A large 
quantity of the business documents found in the temple arch- 
ives are concerned with the business affairs of the temple, and we 
are justified in including the temples in the large centres as 
among the most important business institutions of the country. 
In financial or monetary transactions the position of the tem- 
ples was not unlike that of national banks. ... 

And so on. We may venture the guess that the 
learned professor said more in that last sentence than 
he himself intended, for his lectures were delivered in 
that temple of plutocracy, the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies 
that "all polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!" 

Prayer-wheels 

These priestly empires exist in the world today. If 
we wish to find them we have only to ask ourselves: 



34 The Profits of Religion 

What countries are making no contribution to the prog- 
ress of the race? What countries have nothing to g^ve 
us, whether in art, science, or industry ? 

For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or 
priests of Siam, that "they are exempted from all public 
charges, they salute nobody, while everybody prostrates 
himself before them. They are maintained at the public 
expense." In the same way we read of the negroes of 
the Caribbean islands that "their priests and priestesses 
exercise an almost unlimited power." Miss Kingsley, in 
her "West African Studies", tells us that if we desire to 
understand the institutions of this district, we must study 
the native's religion. 

For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that 
it influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as the 
religion of the Europeans is at times. The African cannot say, 
"Oh, that is all right from a religious point of view, but one 
must be practical." To be practical, to get on in the world, to 
live the day and night through, he must be right in the religious 
point of view, namely, must be on working terms with the 
great world of spirits around him. The knowledge of this spirit 
world constitutes the religion of the African, and his customs 
and ceremonies arise from his idea of the best way to influ- 
ence it. 

Or consider Henry Savage Landor's account of 
Thibet: 

In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims 
make circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and for 
days together, covering the entire distance lying flat upon their 
bodies. . . . From the ceiling of the temple hang hundreds of 
long strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the temple, and be- 
coming so many flying prayers when hung up — for mechanical 
praying in every way is prominent in Thibet. . . . Thus instead 
of having to learn by heart long and varied prayers, all you 
have to do is to stuff the entire prayer-book into a prayer-wheel. 



The Profits of Keligion 35 

and revolve it while repeating as fast as you can four words 
meaning, "O God, the gem emerging from the lotus-flower.". . , . 
The attention of the pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often 
a big bowl, where they may deposit whatever offerings they can 
spare, and it must be said that their religious ideas are so 
strongly developed that they will dispose of a considerable por- 
tion of their money in this fashion. . , . The Lamas are very 
eleven in many ways, and have a great hold over the entire 
country. They are ninety per cent of them unscrupulous 
scamps, depraved in every way and given to every sort of vice. 
So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on the cre- 
dulity and ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain this ignor- 
ance, upon which their luxurious life depends, that foreign influ- 
ence of every kind is strictly kept out of the country. 

The Butcher-Gods 

In this last sentence we have summed up the funda- 
mental fact about institutionalized religion. Wherever 
belief and ritual have become the means of livelihood of 
a class, all innovation will of necessity be taken as an 
attack upon that class; it will be literally a crime — 
robbing the priests of their age-long privileges. And of 
course thiey will oppose the robber — using every weapon 
of terrorism, both of this world and the next. They will 
require the submission, not merely of their own people, 
but of their neighbors, and their jealousy of rival priestly 
castes will be a cause of wars. The story of the early 
days of mankind is a sickening record of torture and 
slaughter in the name of ten thousand butcher-gods. 

Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious 
records how the priests were engaged in establishing the 
prestige of a fetish called "the ark" ; and how the people 
of one tribe violated this fetish and wakened the wrath 
of Jehovah, the god. 



36 The Profits of Religioi^ 

And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had 
looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people 
fifty thousand and three score and ten men; and the people 
lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people 
with a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, 
Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? 

This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that 
he was "a jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway- 
he issued through his ministers precise instructions for 
the most revolting cruelties, the extermination of whole 
nations of men, women and children, whose sole offense 
was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. 
Thus, for example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called 
the people together, and with all solemnity, and with 
many warnings, handed down ten commandments graven 
upon stone tablets ; he went on to set iorth how the peo- 
ple were to set upon and rob their neighbors, and gave 
them these blood-thirsty instructions: 

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land 
whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many na- 
tions before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the 
Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hiv- 
ites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than 
thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before 
thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou 
shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto 
them: . . . But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy 
their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their 
groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art 
a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath 
chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all peo- 
ple that are upon the face of the earth. 

This records of this Jehovah are full of similar hor- 
rors. He sent his chosen people out to destroy the Mid- 
ianites, and they slew all the males, but this was not 



The Profits of Religion 37 

sufificient, and Moses was wroth, and commanded them 
to kill all the married women, and to take the single 
women "for themselves". We are told that sixteen thou- 
sand single women were spared, of whom "the Lord's 
tribute was thirty and two V* In the Book of Joshua we 
read that he had an interview with a supernatural per- 
sonage called "the captain of the Lord's host", and how 
this captain had given to him a magic spell which would 
destroy the city of Jericho. The city should be accursed, 
"even it and all that are therein, to the Lord"; every 
living thing except one traitor-harlot was to be slaugh- 
tered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the 
priestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except 
that "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son 
of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed 
thing" — that is, he hid some gold and silver in his tent ; 
whereupon the army met with a defeat, and everybody 
knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his 
clothes and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark 
of the Lord, and got another message from Jehovah, to 
the effect that the guilty man should be burned with 
fire, "he and all that he hath." 

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son 
of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of 
gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his 
asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they 
brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said. Why 
hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. 
And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with 
fire, after they had stoned him with stones. 

We have no means of knowing what was the char- 
acter of the unfortunate inhabitants of the city of Jericho, 
nor of the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites 



38 The Profits of Religion 

and all the rest of the victims of Jehovah. To be sure, 
we are told by the Hebrew priests that they sacrificed 
their children to their gods ; but then, consider what we 
should believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the 

word of rival priestly castes ! Consider, for example, that 
in this twentieth century we saw an orthodox Jew tried 
in a Russian court of law for having made a sacrifice of 
Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews 
represent a considerable part of the intelligence and 
idealism of Russia. We know in the same way that the 
Moors had most of the culture and all of the scientific 
knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had most of the 
conscience and industry of France; and we know that 
they were massacred or driven out to death by the 
priestly castes of the Middle Ages. 

The Holy Inquisition 

Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those 
mediaeval times, so that we may know what we our- 
selves have escaped. In the fifteenth century there was 
established in Europe the cult of a three-headed god, 
whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They 
were enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt ; they 
sold to the rich the license to commit every possible 
crime, and they held the poor in ignorance and degrada- 
tion. Among the comparatively intelligent and freedom- 
loving people of Bohemia there arose a great reformer, 
John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against the cor- 
ruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power 
by means of a "safe-conduct" — which they repudiated 
because no promise to a heretic could have validity. 
They found him guilty of having taught the hateful doc- 



The Profits of Religion 39 

trine that a priest who committed crimes could not give 
absolution for the crimes of others ; and they held an auto 
de fe — which means a "sentence of faith." As we read 
in Lea's "History of the Inquisition": 

The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund 
(the Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire 
with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes. While 
mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept waiting 
at the door; when brought in he was placed on an elevated 
bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing priestly 
vestments. After some preliminaries, including a sermon by 
the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund that the 
events of that day would confer on him immortal glory, the 
articles of which Huss was convicted were recited. In vain he 
protested that he believed in transubstantiation and in the 
validity of the sacrament in polluted hands. He was ordered 
to hold his tongue, and on his persisting the beadles were told 
to silence him, but in spite of this he continued to utter protests. 
The sentence was then read in the name of the council, con- 
demning him both for his written errors and those which had 
been proven by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and 
incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the Church; 
his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to be de- 
graded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular court. 
Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned him to 
recant while yet there was time. He turned to the crowd, and 
with broken voice declared that he could not confess the errors 
which he never entertained, lest he should lie to God, when the 
bishops interrupted him, crying that they had waited long 
enough, for he was obstinate in his heresy. He was degraded 
in the usual manner, stripped of his sacerdotal vestments, his 
fiagers scraped; but when the tonsure was to be disposed of, an 
absurd quarrel arose among the bishops as to whether the head 
should be shaved with a razor or the tonsure be destroyed with 
scissors. Scissors won the day, and a cross was cut in his 
hair. Then on his head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit 
in height, adorned with painted devils and the inscription, "This 
is the heresiarch." 



40 The Profits of Religion 

The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to 
which he was conducted by two thousand armed men, with 
Palsgrave Louis at their head, and a vast crowd, including many 
nobles, prelates, and cardinals. The route followed was cir- 
cuitous, in order that he might be carried past the episcopal 
palace, In front of which his books were burning, whereat he 
smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for, but he 
sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, "Christ Jesus, 
Son of the living God, have mercy upon us!" and when he 
came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees and prayed. He 
was asked if he wished to confess, and said that he would gladly 
do so if there were space. A wide circle was formed, and Ulrich 
Schorand, who, according to custom, had been providently em- 
powered to take advantage of final weakening, came forward, 
saying, "Dear sir and master, if you will recant your unbelief 
and heresy, for which you must suffer, I will willingly hear 
your confession; but if you will not, you know right well that, 
according to canon law, no one can administer the sacrament to 
a heretic." To this Huss answered, "It is not necessary: I 
am not a mortal sinner." His paper crown fell oflf and he 
smiled as his guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of 
his keepers, and when they were brought to him he thanked 
them for their kindness, saying that they had been to him rather 
brothers than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd 
in German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he 
did not hold, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake, 
two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him, 
and the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to 
abjure. Even yet he could save himself, but only repeated that 
he had been convicted by false witnesses on errors never enter- 
tained by him. They clapped their hands and then withdrew, 
and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss was heard 
to exclaim, "Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy 
upon me!" then a wind springing up and blowing the flames and 
smoke into his face checked further utterances, but his head 
was seen to shake and his lips to move while one might twice 
or thrice recite a paternoster. The tragedy was over; the sorely- 
tried soul had escaped from its tormentors, and the bitterest 
enemies of the reformer could not refuse to him the praise that 



The Profits of Religion 41 

no philosopher of old had faced death with more composure 
than he had shown in his dreadful extremity. No faltering of 
the voice had betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, 
seeing Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, 
ordered it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced 
as a relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the 
same view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown 
into the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug 
up and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around 
the spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay, 
which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next day 
thanks were returned to God in a solemn procession in which 
figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and nobles, nine- 
teen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven bishops, and all 
the clergy of the council. A few days later Sigismund, who had 
delayed his departure for Spain to see the matter concluded, 
left Constance, feeling that his work was done. 

Hell-Fire 

If such a scene could be witnessed in the world to- 
day, it would only be in some remote and wholly savage 
place, such as the mountains of Hayti, or the Solomon 
Islands. It could no longer happen in any civilized 
country ; the reason being, not any abatement of the pre- 
tensions of the priesthood, but solely the power of 
science, embodied in the physical arm of a secular State. 
The advance of that arm the church has fought syste- 
matically, in every country, and at every point. To 
quote Bucklie: "A careful study of the history of re- 
ligious toleration will prove that in every Christian 
country where it has been adopted, it has been forced 
upon the clergy by the authority of the secular classes." 
The wolf of superstition has been driven into its lair; 
but it has backed away snarling, and it still crouches, 
watching for a chance to spring. The Church which 



42 The Profits of Religion 

burned John Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for 
teaching that the earth moves round the sun — that same 
church, in the name of the same three-headed god, sent 
out Francesco Ferrer to the firing-squad; if it does not 
do the same thing to the author of this book, it will be 
solely because of the police. Not being allowed to burn 
me here, the clergy will vent their holy indignation by 
sentencing me to eternal burning in a future world which 
they have created, and which they run to suit them- 
selves. 

It is a fact, the significance of which cannot bie ex- 
aggerated, that the measure of the civilization which any 
nation has attained is the extent to which it has cur- 
tailed the power of institutionalized religion. Those peo- 
ples which are wholly under the sway of the priesthood, 
such as Thibetans and Koreans, Siamese and Caribbeans, 
are peoples among whom the intellectual life does not 
exist. Farther in advance are Hindoos and Turks, who 
are religious, but not exclusively. Still farther on the 
way are Spaniards and Irish ; here, for example, is a flash- 
light of the Irish peasantry, given by one of their num- 
ber, Patrick MacGill: 

The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who 
always told the people if they did not pay their debts they 
would burn for ever and ever in hell. "The fires of eternity 
will make you sorry for the debts that you did not pay," said the 
priest. "What is eternity?" he would ask in a solemn voice 
from the altar steps. "If a man tried to count the sands on 
the sea-shore and took a million years to count every single 
grain, how long would it take him to count them all? A long 
time, you'll say. But that time is nothing to eternity. Just 
think of it! Burning in hell while a man, taking a million years 
to count a grain of sand, counts all the sand on the sea-shore. 
And this because you did not pay Farley McKeown his lawful 



The Profits of Religion 43 

debts, his lawful debts within the letter of the law." That con- 
cluding phrase, "within the letter of the law," struck terror 
into all who listened, and no one, maybe not even the priest 
himself, knew what it meant. 

There is light in Ireland to-day, and hope for an 
Irish culture ; the thing to be noted is that it comes from 
two movements, one for agricultural co-operation and 
the other for political independence — both of them defi- 
nitely and specifically non-religious. This same thing 
has been true of the movements which have helped on 
happier nations, such as the republics of France and 
America, which have put an end to the power of the 
priestly caste to take property by force, and to dominate 
the mind of the child without its parents' consent. 

This is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has 
apparently not yet occurred to any legislature that the 
State may owe a duty to the child to protect its mind 
from being poisoned, even though it has the misfortune 
to be born of poisoned parents. It is still permitted that 
parents should terrify their little ones with images of a 
personal devil and a hell of eternal brimstone and sul- 
phur; it is permitted to found schools for the teaching 
of devil-doctrines; it is permitted to organize gigantic 
campaigns and systematically to infect whole cities full 
of men, women and children with hell-fire phobias. In 
the American city where I write one may see gather- 
ings of people sunk upon their knees, even rolling on the 
ground in convulsions, moaning, sobbing, screaming to 
be delivered from such torments. I open my morning 
papier and read of the arrest of five men and seven 
women in Los Angeles, members of a sect known as the 
"Church of the Living God", upon a charge of having 
disturbed the peace of their neighbors. The police of- 



44 The Profits of Religion 

ficers testified that the accused claimed to be possessed 
of the divine spirit, and that as signs of this possession 
they "crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and barked 
like dogs." There were "other acts, even more start- 
ling", about which the newspapers did not go into de- 
tails. And again, a week or two later, I read how a wom- 
an has been heard screaming, and found tied to a bed- 
post, being whipped by a man. She belonged to a relig- 
ious sect which had found her guilty of witchcraft. An- 
other woman was about to shoot her, but this woman's 
nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who 
decreed a whipping. The victim explained to the police 
that she would have deserved to be whipped had she 
really been a witch, but a mistake had been made — it 
was another woman who was the witch. And again in 
the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news 
item, telling how a certain man awakened one morning, 
and found on his pillow where his head had lain a per- 
fect reproduction of the head of Christ with its crown of 
thorns. He called in his neighbors to witness the mir- 
acle, and declared that while he was not superstitious, 
he knew that such a thing could not have happened by 
chance, and he knew what it was intended to signify — 
he would buy more Liberty Bonds and be more ardent 
in his support of the war! 

And this is the world in which our scientists and 
men of culture think that the battle of the intellect is 
won, and that it is no longer necessary to spend our 
energies in fighting "Religion!" 



BOOK TWO 

The Church of Good Society 

Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands 

alert 
By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt, 
Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure, 
And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure. 

Within the House of Mammon the golden altar lifts 
Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly incense 

drifts — 
A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals. 
To tell of hopes long-ended, to tell the death of soulss 

Sterling. 



45 



The Profits of Religion 47 

The Rain Makers 

I begin with the Church of Good Society, because it 
happens to be the Church in which I was brought up. 
Reading this statement, some of my readers suspected 
me of snobbish pride. I search my heart ; yes, it brings 
a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I 
knew this atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sun- 
day those melodious and hypnotizing incantations were 
chanted in my childish ears! I take up the book of 
ritual, done in aristocratic black leather with gold let- 
tering, and the old worn volume brings me strange 
stirrings of recollected awe. But I endeavor to re- 
press these vestigial emotions and to see the volume — 
not as a message from God to Good Society, but as a 
landmark of man's age-long struggle against myth and 
dogma used as a source of income and a shield to 
privilege. 

In the beginning, of course, the priest and the ma- 
gician ruled the field. But today, as I examine this 
"Book of Common Prayer", I discover that there is at 
least one spot out of which he has been cleared en- 
tirely ; there appears no prayer to planets to stand still, 
or to comets to go away. The "Church of Good Society" 
has discovered astronomy ! But if any astronomer at- 
tributes this to his instruments with their marvelous 
accuracy, let him at least stop to consider my "eco- 
nomic interpretation" of the phenomenon — ^the fact 
that the heavenly bodies affect the destinies of mankind 
so little that there has not been sufficient emolument 
to justify the priest in holding on to his job as astrol- 
oger. 

But when you come to the field of meteorology, what 
a difference ! Has any utmost precision of barometer 



48 The Profits of Religion 

been able to drive the priest out of his prerogatives as 
rainmaker? Not even in the most civilized of coun- 
tries ; not in that most decorous and dignified of insti- 
tutions, the Protestant Episcopal Church of America! 
I study with care the passage wherein the clergyman 
appears as controller of the fate of crops. I note a 
chastened caution of phraseology; the church will not 
repeat the experience of the sorcerer's apprentice, who set 
the demons to bringing water, and then could not make 
them stop ! The spell invokes "moderate rain and show- 
ers"; and as an additional precaution there is a counter- 
spell against "excessive rains and floods" : the weather- 
faucet being thus under exact control. 

I turn the pages of this "Book of Common Prayer", 
and note the remnants of magic which it contains. There 
are not many of the emergencies of life with which the 
priest is not authorized to deal; not many natural phe- 
nomena for which he may not claim the credit. And in 
case anything should have been overlooked, there is a 
blanket order upon Providence: "Graciously hear us, 
that those evils which the craft or subtilty of the devil 
or man worketh against us, be brought to nought!" I 
am reminded of the idea which haunted my childhood, 
reading fairy-stories about the hero who was allowed 
three wishes that would come true. I could never under- 
stand why the hero did not settle the matter once for 
all — by wishing that everything he wished might come 
true! 

Most of these incantations are harmless, and some are 
amiable ; but now and then you come upon one which is 
sinister in its implications. The volume before me hap- 
pens to be of the Church of England, which is even more 



The Profits of Religion 49 

forthright in its confronting of the Great Magic. Many 
years ago I remember talking with an English army of- 
ficer, asking how he could feel sure of his soldiers in case 
of labor strikes ; did it never occur to him that the men 
had relatives among the workers, and might some time 
refuse to shoot them? His answer was that he was 
aware of it, the military had worked out its technique with 
care. He would never think of ordering his men to fire 
upon a mob in cold blood; he would first start the spell 
of discipline to work, he would march them round the 
block, and get them in thie swing, get their blood mov- 
ing to military music ; then, when he gave the order, in 
they would go. I have never forgotten the gesture, the 
animation with which he illustrated their going — I could 
hear the grunting of bayonets in the flesh of men. The 
social system prevailing in England has made necessary 
the perfecting of such military technique; also, you dis- 
cover, English piety has made necessary the providing of 
a religious sanction for it. After the job has been done 
and the bayonets have been wiped clean, the company is 
marched to church, and the officer kneels in his family 
pew, and the privates kneel with the parlor-maids, and 
the clergyman raises his hands to heaven and intones: 
"We bless thy Holy Name, that it hath pleased Thee to 
appease the seditious tumults which have been lately 
raised up among us !" 

And sometimes the clergyman does more than bless 
the killers — he even takes part in their bloody work. In 
the Home Office Records of the British Government I 
read (vol 40, page 17) how certain miners were on strike 
against low wages and the "truck" system, and the Vicar 
of Abergavenny put himself at the head of the yieomanry 



50 The Profits of Religion 

and the Greys. He wrote the Home Office a lively ac- 
count of his military operations. All that remained was 
to apprehend certain of the strikers, "and then I shall be 
able to return to my Clerical duties.** Later he wrote of 
the "sinister influences" which kept the miners from re- 
turning to their work, and how he had put half a dozen 
of the most obstinate in prison. 

The Babylonian Fire-god 

So we come to the most important of the functions of 
the tribal god, as an ally in war, an inspirer to martial 
valour. When in ancient Babylonia you wished to over- 
come your enemies, you went to the shrine of the Fire- 
god, and with awful rites the priest pronounced incan- 
tations, which have been preserved on bricks and handed 
down for the use of modern churches. "Pronounce in a 
whisper, and have a bronze image therewith," commands 
the ancient text, and runs on for many strophes in this 
fashion : 

Let them die, but let me live! 

Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper! 
Let them perish, but let me increase! 
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong! 
O, fire-god, mighty, exalted among the gods, 
Thou art the god, thou art my lord, etc. 
This was in heathen Babylon, some three thousand 
years ago. Since then, the world has movied on — 

Three thousand years of war and peace and glory, 
Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes, 

Of mighty voices raised in song and story, 
Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams — 

And in one of the world's leading nations the people 
stand up and bare their heads, and sing to their god to 
save their king and punish those who oppose him — 



The Profits of Religion 51 

O Lord our God, arise, 
Scatter his enemies, 

And make them fall; 
Confound their politics. 
Frustrate their knavish tricks, 
On him our hopes we fix, 

God save us all. 

Recently, I understand, it has become the custom to 
omit this stanza from the English national anthem; but 
it is clear that this is because of its crudity of expression, 
not because of objection to the idea of praying to a god 
to assist one nation and injure others ; for the same sen- 
timent is expressed again and again in the most care- 
fully edited of prayer-books: 

Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their 

devices. 
Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies. 
Strengthen him (the King) that he may vanquish and overcome 

all his enemies. 
There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God. 

Prayers such as these are pronounced in every so- 
called civilized nation today. Behind every battle-line 
in Europe you may see the priests of the Babylonian Fire- 
god with their bronze images and their ancient incanta- 
tions; you may see magic spells being wrought, magic 
standards sanctified, magic bread eaten and magic wine 
drunk, fetishes blessed and hoodoos lifted, eternity ran- 
sacked to find means of inciting soldiers to the mood 
where they will "go in". Throughout all civilization, the 
phobias and manias of war have thrown the people back 
into the toils of the priest, and that church which tor- 
tured Galileo in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and shot 
Ferrer beneath the walls of the fortress of Montjuich, is 
rejoicing in a "rebirth of religion". 



52 The Profits of Religion 

The Medicine-men 

Andrew D. White tells us that 

It was noted that in the 14th century, after the great plague, 
the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased propor- 
tion of the landed and personal property of every European 
country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great ec- 
lesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the min- 
isters of God." 

And so naturally the clergy hold on to their preroga- 
tive as banishers of epidemics. Who knows what day 
the Lord may see fit to rebuke the upstart teachers of 
impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge the peo- 
ple back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses 
and Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned 
and half-suppressed work, "The Analysis of Religious Be- 
lief", quotes some missionaries to the Fiji islanders, con- 
cerning the ideas of these benighted heathen on the sub- 
ject of a pestilence. It was the work of a "disease- 
maker", who was burning images of the people with in- 
cantations; so they blew horns to frighten this disease- 
maker from his spells. The missionaries undertook to 
explain the true cause of the affliction — and thereby re- 
vealed that they stood upon the same intellectual level 
as the heathen they were supposed to instruct! It ap- 
peared that the natives had been at war with their neigh- 
bors, and the missionaries had commanded them to de- 
sist; they had refused to obey, and God had sent the 
epidemic as punishment for savage presumption ! 

And on precisely this same Fijian level stands the 
"Book of Common Prayer" of our most decorous and cul- 
tured of churches. I remember as a little child lying on 
a bed of sickness, occasioned by the prevalence in our 



The Profits of Religion 53 

home of the Southern custom of hot bread three times a 
day; and there came an amiable clerical gentleman and 
recited the service proper to such pastoral calls: "Take 
therefore in good part the visitation of the Lord !" And 
again, when my mother was ill, I remember how the 
clergyman read out in church a prayer for hfer, specify- 
ing all sickness, "in mind, body or estate". I was think- 
ing only of my mother, and the meaning of these words 
passed over my childish head ; I did not realize that the 
elderly plutocrat in black broadcloth who knelt in the 
pew in front of me was invoking the aid of the Almighty 
so that his tenements might bring in their rentals prompt- 
ly; so that his little "flyer" in cotton might prove suc- 
cessful ; so that the children in his mills might work with 
greater speed. 

Somebody asked Voltaire if you could kill a cow by 
incantations, and he answered, "Yes, if you use a little 
strychnine with it." And that would seem to be the at- 
titude of the present-day Anglican church-member; he 
calls in the best physician he knows, he makes sure that 
his plumbing is sound, and after that he thinks it can do 
no harm to let the Lord have a chance. It makes the 
women happy, and after all, there are a lot of things we 
don't yet know about the world. So he repairs to the 
family pew, and recites over the venierable prayers, and 
contributes his mite to thie maintenance of an institu- 
tion which, fourteen Sundays every year, proclaims the 
terrifying menaces of the Athanasian Creed : 

Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that 
he hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do keep 
whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlast- 
ingly. 

For the bi^nefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be 



54 The Profits of Religion 

explained that the "Catholick faith" here referred to is not 
the Roman Catholic, but that of the Church of England 
and the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. This 
creed of the ancient Alexandrian lays down the truth with 
grim and menacing precision — forty-four paragraphs of 
metaphysical minutiae, closing with the final doom: 
"This is the Catholick faith : which except a man believe 
faithfully, he cannot be saved/' 

You see, the founders of this august institution were 
not content with cultured complacency; what they be- 
lieved they believed really, with their whole hearts, and 
they were ready to act upon it, even if it meant burning 
their own at the stake. Also, they knew the ceaseless 
impulse of the mind to grow; the terrible temptation 
which confronts each new generation to believe that 
which is reasonable. They met the situation by setting 
out the true faith in words which no one could mistake. 
They have provided, not merely the Creed of Athanasius, 
but also the "Thirty-nine Articles" — which are thirty- 
nine separate and binding guarantees that one who holds 
orders in the Episcopal Church shall be either a man of 
inferior mentality, or else a sophist and hypocrite. How 
desperate some of them have become in the face of this 
cruel dilemma is illustrated by the tale which is told of 
Dr. Jowett, of Balliol College, Oxford : that when he was 
required to recite the "Apostle's Creed" in public, he 
would save himself by inserting the words "used to" be- 
tween the words "I believe", saying the inserted words 
under his breath, thus, "I used to believe in the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Perhaps the eminent di- 
vine never did this ; but the fact that his students told it, 
and thought it funny, is sufficient indication of their at- 



\ 



The Profits of Religion 55 

titude toward their "Religion." TIis son of William 
George Ward tells in his biography how this leader of 
the "Tractarian Movement" met the problem with 
cynicism which seems almost sublime: "Make yourself 
clear that you are justified in deception; and then lie like 
a trooper!" 

The Canonization of Incompetence 

The supreme crime of the church fo-day is that every- 
where and in all its operations and influences it is on the 
side of sloth of mind ; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies 
stupidity, it canonizes incompetence. Consider the power 
of the Church of England and its favorite daughter here 
in America ; consider their prestige with the press and in 
politics, their hold upon literature and the arts, their con- 
trol of education and the minds of children, of charity 
and the lives of the poor : consider all this, and then say 
what it means to society that such a power must be, in 
every new issue that arises, on the side of reaction and 
falsehood. "So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
shall be," runs the church's formula ; and this per se and 
a priori, of necessity and in the nature of the case. 

Turn over the pages of history and read the damning 
record of the church's opposition to every advance in 
every field of science, even the most remote from theo- 
logical concern. Here is the Reverend Edward Massey, 
preaching in 1772 on "The Dangerous and Sinful Prac- 
tice of Inoculation" ; declaring that Job's distemper was 
probably confluent small-pox ; that he had been inoculated 
doubtless by the devil ; that diseases are sent by Provi- 
dence for the punishment of sin; and that the proposed 
attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation". Here 



56 The Profits of Religion 

are the Scotch clergy of the middle of the nineteenth 
century denouncing the use of chloroform in obstetrics, 
because it is seeking "to avoid one part of the primeval 
curse on woman". Here is Bishop Wilberforce of Ox- 
ford anathematizing Darwin: "The principle of natural 
selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of 
God" ; it "contradicts the revealed relation of creation to 
its creator"; it "is inconsistent with the fulness of His 
glory"; it is "a dishonoring view of nature". And the 
Bishop settled the matter by asking Huxley whether he 
was descended from an ape through his grandmother or 
grandfather. 

Think what it means, friends of progress, that these 
ecclesiastical figures should be set up for the reverence of 
the populace, and that every time mankind is to make an 
advance in power over Nature, the pioneers of thought 
have to come with crow-bars and derricks and heave 
these figures out of the way ! And you think that condi- 
tions are changed to-day? But consider syphilis and 
gonorrhea, about which we know so much, and can do 
almost nothing ; consider birth-control, which we are sent 
to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce 
reforms for which the world is crying — and for which it 
must wait, because of St. Paul ! Realize that up to date 
it has proven impossible to persuade the English Church 
to permit a man to marry his dieceased wife's sister I 
That when the war broke upon England the whole nation 
was occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment 
of the church of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been 
legally possible for an unbeliever to hold a seat in Parlia- 
ment; while up to the present day men are tried for 
blasphemy and convicted under the decisions of Lord 



The Profits of Religion 57 

Hale, to the effect that "it is a crime either to deny the 
truth of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian re- 
ligion or to hold them up to contempt or ridicule." Said 
Mr. Justice Horridge, at the West Riding Assizes, 1911: 
"A man is not free in any public place to use common 
ridicule on subjects which are sacred." 

The purpose, as outlined by the public prosecutor in 
London, is "to preserve the standard of outward dec- 
ency." And you will find that the one essential to prose- 
cution is always that the victim shall be obscure and 
helpless ; never by any chance is he a duke in a drawing- 
room. I will record an utterance of one of the obscure 
victims of the British "standard of outward decency", a 
teacher of mathematics named Holyoake, who presumed 
to discuss in a public hall the starvation of the working 
classes of the country. A preacher objected that he had 
discussed "our duty to our neighbor" and neglected "our 
duty to God" ; whereupon the lecturer replied : "Our na- 
tional Church and general religious institutions cost us, 
upon accredited computation, about twenty million 
pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I ap- 
peal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not 
too poor to have a God. While our distress lasts, I think 
it would be wise to put deity upon half pay." And for 
that utterance the unfortunate teacher of mathematics 
served six months in the common Gaol at Gloucester! 

While men were being tried for publishing the "Free- 
thinker", the Premier of England was William Ewart 
Gladstone. And if you wish to knov/ what an established 
church can do by way of setting up dullness in high 
places, get a volume of this "Grand Old Man's" writings 
on theological and religious questions. Read his "Juven- 



58 The Profits of Religion 

tus Mundi", in the course of which he establishes a mys- 
tic connection between the trident of Neptune and the 
Christian Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that the 
writer of Genesis was an inspired geologist ! This writer 
of Genesis points out in Nature "a grand, fourfold di- 
vision, set forth in an orderly succession of times : First, 
the water population ; secondly, the air population ; third- 
ly, the land population of animals ; fourthly, the land pop- 
ulation consummated in man." And it seems that this 
division and sequence "is understood to have been so ar- 
firmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken 
as a diemonstrated conclusion and established fact." 
Hence we must conclude of the writer of Genesis that 
"his knowledge was divine"! Consider that this was 
actually published in one of the leading British month- 
lies, and that it was necessary for Professor Huxley to 
answer it, pointing out that so far is it from being true 
that "a fourfold division and orderly sequence" of water, 
air and land animals "has been affirmed in our time by 
natural science", that on the contrary, the assertion is 
"directly contradictory to facts known to everyone who 
is acquainted with the elements of natural science". The 
distribution of fossils proves that land animals originated 
before sea-animals, and there has been such a mixing of 
land, sea and air animals as utterly to destroy the reputa- 
tion of both Genesis and Gladstone as possessing a di- 
vine knowledge of Geology. 

Gibson's Preservative 

I have a friend, a well-known "scholar", who permits 
me the use of his extensive library. I stand in the middle 
and look about me, and see in the dim shadows walls 
lined from floor to ceiling with decorous and grave-look- 



The Profits of Religion 59 

ing books, bound for the most part in black, many of 
them fading to green with age. There are literally thou- 
sands of such, and their theme is the pseudo-science of 
"divinity". I close my eyes, to make the test fair, and 
walk to the shelves and put out my hand and take a book. 
It proves to be a modern work, "A History of the Eng- 
lish Prayer-book in Relation to the Doctrine of thie 
Eucharist". I turn the pages and discover that it is a 
study of the variations of one minute detail of church 
doctrine. This learned divine — he has written many such 
works, as the advertisements inform us — fills up the 
greater part of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds 
of authorities, arguments and counter-arguments over 
supernatural subtleties. I will give one sample of these 
footnotes — asking the reader to be patient : 

I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode: 
("On Eucharist", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware in Gib- 
son's "Preservative", vol X, Chap II) "One great point for which 
our divines have contended, in opposition to Romish errors, has 
been the reality of that presence of Christ's Body and Blood to 
the soul of the believer which is affected through the operation 
of the Holy Spirit notwithstanding the absence of that Body 
and Blood in Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both 
present and absent; present, really and truly present, in one 
sense — that is, by the soul being brought into immediate com- 
munion with — but absent in another sense — that is, as regards 
the contiguity of its substance to our bodies. The authors under 
review, like the Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real 
Presence, and assuming their own interpretation of the phrase 
to be the only true one, press into their service the testimony 
of divines who, though using the phrase, apply it in a sense the 
reverse of theirs. The ambiguity of the phrase, and its mis- 
application by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our 
divines to repudiate it, etc." 

Realize that of the work from which this "valuable 



60 The Profits of Religion 

observation" is quoted, there are at least two volumes, the 
second volume containing not less than 757 pages 1 
Realizie that in Gibson's "Preservative" there are not 
less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in 
this twentieth century a considerable portion of the men- 
tal energies of the world's greatest empire is devoted to 
that kind of learning ! 

I turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 
1910. I was in England within a year of that time, and 
so I can tell what was the condition of the English people 
while printers were making and papers were reviewing 
and book-stores were distributing this work of ecclesias- 
tical research. I walked along the Embankment and saw 
the pitiful wrietches, men, women and sometimes children, 
clad in filthy rags, starved white and frozen blue, soaked 
in winter rains and shivering in winter winds, homeless, 
hopeless, unheeded by the doctors of divinity, unpre- 
served by Gibson's "Preservative". I walked on Hamp- 
stead Heath on Easter day, when the population of the 
slums turns out for its one holiday; I walked, literally 
trembling with horror, for I had never seen such sights 
nor dreamed of them. These creatures were hardly to be 
recognized as human beings; they were some new gro- 
tesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could 
only shamble ; they could not laugh, they could only leer. 
I saw a hand-organ playing, and turned away — the 
things they did in their efforts to dance werie not to be 
watched. And then I went out into the beautiful English 
country ; cultured and charming ladies took me in swift, 
smooth motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and the 
drink-sodden, starch-poisoned inhabitants — slum-popula- 
tions everywhere, even on the land! When the news- 



i 



The Profits of Religion 61 

paper reporters came to me, I said that I had just come 
from Germany, and that if ever England found herself at 
war with that country, she would regret that she had let 
the bodies and the minds of her people rot ; for which ex- 
pression I was severely taken to task by more than one 
British divine. 

The bodies — and the minds ; the rot of the latter being 
the cause of the former. All over England in that year 
of 1910, in thousands of schools, rich and poor, and in the 
greatest centres of learning, men like Dean Goode were 
teaching boys dead languages and dead sciences and dead 
arts; sending them out to life with no more conception 
of the modern world than a monk of the Middle Ages; 
sending them out with minds made hard and inflexible, 
ignorant of science, indifferent to progress, contemptuous 
of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight, this ter- 
rified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and 
disciplined by modern experts, scientists and technicians. 
The awful muddle that was in England during the first 
two years of the war has not yet been told in print ; but 
thousands know it, and some day it will be written, and 
it will finish forever the prestige of the British ruling 
caste. They rushed off an expedition to Gallipoli, and 
somebody forgot the water-supply, and at one time they 
had ninety-five thousand cases of dysentery ! 

They always "muddle through", they tell you ; that is 
the motto of their ruling caste. But this time they did not 
"muddle through" — they had to come to America for 
help. As I write, our Congress is voting billions and tens 
of billions of dollars, and a million of the best of our 
young manhood are being taken from their homes — be- 
cause in 1910 the mind of England was occupied with 



62 The Profits of Religion 

Dean Goode "On Eucharist", and the ten volumes of Gib- 
son*s "Preservative". 

The Elders 

What the Church means in human affairs is the rule of 
the aged. It means old men in the seats of authority, not 
merely in the church, but in the law-courts and in Parlia- 
ment, ieven in the army and navy. For a test I look up 
the list of bishops of the Church of England in Whitaker's 
Almanac; it appears that there are 40 of these function- 
aries, including the archbishops, but not the suffragans ; 
and that the total salary paid to them amounts to more 
than nine hundred thousand dollars a year. This, it should 
be understood, does not include the pay of their as- 
sistants, nor the cost of maintaining their religious estab- 
lishments ; it does not include any private incomes which 
they or their wives may possess, as members of the priv- 
ileged classes of the Empire. I look up their ages in 
Who's Who, and I find that there is only one below 
fifty-three; the oldest of them is ninety-one, while the 
average age of the goodly company is sieventy. There 
have been men in history who have retained their flexi- 
bility of mind, their ability to adjust themselves to new 
circumstances at the age of seventy, but it will always 
be found that these men were trained in sciience and 
practical affairs, never in dead languages and theology. 
One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter 
that he worked seventeen hours a day, and had no time 
to form an opinion on the labor question. 

And now — here is the crux of thie argument — do these 
aged gentlemen rule of their own power? They do not! 
They do literally nothing of their own power ; they could 



The Profits of Religion 63 

not make their own episcopal robes, they could not 
evien cook their own episcopal dinners. They have to be 
maintained in all their comings and goings. Who sup- 
ports them, and to what end? 

The roots of the English Church are in the EngUsh 
land system, which is one of the infamies of the modern 
world. It dates from the days of William the Norman, 
who took possession of Britain with his sword, and in 
order to keep possession for himself and his heirs, dis- 
tributed the land among his nobles and prelates. In 
those days, you understand, a high ecclesiastic was a man 
of war, who did not stoop to veil his predatory nature 
under pretense of philanthropy; the abbots and arch- 
bishops of William wore armor and had their troops of 
knights like the barons and the dukes. William gave 
them vast tracts, and at the same time he gave them 
orders which they obeyed. Says the English chronicler, 
"Stark he was. Bishops he stripped of their bishopricks, 
abbots of their abbacies". Green tells us that "the de- 
pendencie of the church on the royal power was strictly 
enforced. Homage was exacted from bishop as from 
baron." And what was this homage? The bishop 
knelt before William, bareheaded and without arms, and 
swore : "Hear my lord, I become liege man of yours for 
life and limb and earthly regard, and I will keep faith 
and loyalty to you for life and death, God help me." 

The lands which the church got from William the 
Norman, she has held, and always on the same condition 
— that she shall be "liege man for life and limb and 
earthly regard". In this you have the whole story of 
the church of England, in the twentieth century as in the 
eleventh. The balance of power has shifted from time 



64 The Profits of Religion 

to time ; old families have lost the land and new families 
have gotten it ; but the loyalty and homage of the church 
haye been held by the land, as the needle of the compass 
is held by a mass of metal. Some two hundred and fifty 
years ago a popular song gave the general impression — 

For this is law that I'll maintain 

Until my dying day, sir: 
That whatsoever king shall reign 

I'll still be vicar of Bray, sir! 

So, wherever you take the Anglican clergy, they are 
Tories and Royalists, conservatives and reactionaries, 
friends of every injustice that profits the owning class. 
And always among themselves you find them intriguing 
and squabbling over the dividing of the spoils; always 
you find them enjoying leisure and ease, while the peo- 
ple suffer and the rebels complain. One can pass down 
the corridor of English history and prove this statement 
by the words of Englishmen from every single genera- 
tion. Take the fourteenth century; the "Good Parlia- 
ment" declares that 

Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices 
of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly ob- 
tain one of twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not to 
be shaven and shorn. 

And a little later comes the poet of the people, Piers 
Plowman — 

But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets, 

A leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land, 

Pricking on a palfrey from manor to manor, 

A heap of hounds at his back, as tho he were a lord; 

And if his servant kneel not when he brings his cup. 

He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy. 

Badly have lords done to give their heirs* lands 



The Profits of Religion 65 

Away to the Orders that have no pity; 
Money rains upon their altars. 
There where such parsons be living at ease 
>^ They have no pity on the poor; that is their "charity". 
Ye hold you as lords; your lands are too broad, 
But there shall come a king and he shall shrive you all 
And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your Rule. 

Another step through history, and in the early part 
of the sixteenth century here is Simon Fish, addressing 
King Henry the Eighth, in the "Supplicacyon for the 
Beggars", complaining of the "strong, puissant and coun- 
terfeit holy and ydell" which "are now increased under 
your sight, not only into a great nombre, but ynto a 
kingdome." 

They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten 
ynto their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. 
The goodliest lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are 
theyres. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the 
corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves, lambes, 
pigges, gese and chikens. Ye, and they looke so narowly uppon 
theyre proufittes, that the poore wyves must be countable to 
thym of every tenth eg, or elles she gettith not her rytes at 
ester, shal be taken as an heretike. . . . Is it any merveille 
that youre people so compleine of povertie? The Turke nowe, 
in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get so moche grounde of 
christendome . . . And whate do al these gredy sort of 
sturdy, idell, holy theves? These be they that have made an 
hundredth thousand idell hores in your realme. These be they 
that catche the pokkes ot one woman, and here them to an 
other. 

The petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives 
and all their goods with them, and if any man protest 
they make him a heretic, "so that it maketh him wisshe 
that he had not done it". Also they take fortunes for 
masses and then don't say them. "If the Abbot of wiest- 



66 Th^ Profits of Religion 

minster shulde sing every day as many masses for his 
founders as he is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 
monkes were too few." The petitioner suggests that the 
king shall "tie these holy idell theves to the cartes, to be 
whipped naked about every market towne till they will 
fall to laboure !" 

Church History 

King Henry did not follow this suggestion precisely, 
but he took away the property of the religious orders for 
the expenses of his many wives and mistresses, and forced 
the clergy in England to forswear obedience to the Pope 
and make his royal self their spiritual head. This was 
the beginning of the Anglican Church, as distinguished 
from the Catholic; a beginning of which the Anglican 
clergy are not so proud as they would like to be. When 
I was a boy, they taught me what they called "church 
history", and when they came to Henry the Eighth they 
^sed him as an illustration of the fact that the Lord is 
sometimes wont to choose evil men to carry out His 
righteous purposes. They did not explain why the Lord 
should do this confusing thing, nor just how you were 
to know, when you saw something being done by a mur- 
derous adulterer, whether it was the will of the Lord 
or of Satan ; nor did they go into details as to the mo- 
tives which the Lord had been at pains to provide, so as 
to induce his royal agent to found the Anglican Church. 
For such details you have to consult another set of au- 
thorities — the victims of the plundering. 

When I was in college my professor of Latin was a 
gentleman with bushy brown whiskers and a thundering 
voice of which I was often the object — for even in those 
early days I had the habit of persisting in embarrassing 



The Profits op Religion 67 

questions. This professor v/as a devout Catholic, and 
not even in dealing with ancient Romans could he re- 
strain his propaganda impulses. Later on in life he be- 
came editor of the "Catholic Encyclopedia", and now 
when I turn its pages, I imagine that I see the bushy 
brown whiskers, and hear the thundering voice: "Mr. 
Sinclair, it is so because I tell you it is so !" 

I investigate, and find that my ex-professor knows all 
about King Henry the Eighth, and his motives in found- 
ing the Church of England; he is ready with an "eco- 
nomic interpretation", as complete as the most rabid 
muckraker could desire ! It appears that the king wanted 
a new wife, and demanded that the Pope should grant 
the necessary permission ; in his efforts to browbeat the 
Pope into such betrayal of duty. King Henry threatened 
the withdrawal of the "annates" and the "Peter's pence'^ 
Later on he forced the clergy to declare that the Pope 
was "only a foreign bishop", and in order to "stamp out 
overt expression of disaffection, he embarked upon a ver- 
itable reign of terror". 

In Anglican histories, you are assured that all this 
was a work of religious reform, and that after it the 
Church was the pure vehicle of God's grac^e. There were 
no more "holy idell theves", holding the land of England 
and plundering the poor. But get to know the clergy, 
and see things from the inside, and you will meet some 
one like the Archbishop of Cashell, who wrote to one of 
his intimates: 

I conclude that a good bishop has nothing more to do than 
to eat, drink and grow fat, rich and die; which laudable ex- 
ample I propose for the remainder of my days to follow. 

If you say that might be a casual jest, hear what 



68 The Profits of Religion 

Thackeray reports of that period, the eighteenth cen- 
tury, which he knew with peculiar intimacy : 

I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious 
King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5000 
pounds. (She betted him the 5000 pounds that he would not 
be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only 
prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As 
I peep into George II's St. James, I see crowds of cassocks 
pushing up the back-stairs of the ladies of the court; stealthy 
clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old king 
yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain 
before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what? — About 
righteousness and judgment? Whilst the chaplain is preach- 
ing, the king is chattering in German and almost as loud as the 
preacher; so loud that the clergyman actually burst out crying 
in his pulpit, because the defender of the faith and the dispenser 
of bishoprics would not listen to him! 

Land and Livings 

And how is it in the twentieth century? Have 
conditions been much improved? There are great Eng- 
lishmen who do not think so. I quote Robert Buchanan, 
a poet who spoke for the people, and who therefore has 
still to be recognized by English critics. He writes of 
the "New Rome", by which he means present-day Eng- 
land: 

The gods are dead, but in their name 
Humanity is sold to shame. 
While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest 
Sitteth with robbers at the feast, 
Blesses the laden, blood-stained board. 
Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword. 
And poureth freely (now as then) 
The sacramental blood of Men! 

You see, the land system of England remains — the 
changes having been for the worse. William the Con- 



The Profits of Religion 69 

queror wanted to keep the Saxon peasantry contented, so 
he left them their "commons" ; but in the eighteenth cen- 
tury these were nearly all filched away. We saw the 
same thing done within the last generation in Mexico, 
and from the same motive^because developing capital- 
ism needs cheap labor, whereas people who have access 
to the land will not slave in mills and mines. In Eng- 
land, from the time of Queen Anne to that of William 
and Mary, the parliaments of the landlords passed some 
four thousand separate acts, whereby more than seven 
million acres of the common land were stolen from the 
people. It has been calculated that these acres might 
havie supported a million families; and ever since then 
England has had to feed a million paupers all the time. 
As an old song puts the matter: 

Why prosecute the man or woman 

Who steals a goose from off the common, 

And let the greater felon loose 

Who steals the common from the goose? 

In our day the land aristocracy is rooted like the na- 
tive oak in British soil : some of them direct descendants 
of the Normans, others children of the court favorites 
and panders who grew rich in the days of the Tudors and 
the unspeakable Stuarts. Seven men own practically all 
the land of the city and county of London, and collect 
tributie from seven millions of people. The estates are 
entailed — that is, handed down from father to oldest son 
automatically ; you cannot buy any land, but if you want 
to build, the landlord gives you a lease, and when the 
lease is up, he takes possession of your buildings. The 
tribute which London pays is more than a hundred mil- 
lion dollars a year. So absolute is the right of the land- 



70 The Pkofits of Religion 

owner that he can sue for trespass the driver on an aero- 
plane which flies over him; he imposes on fishermen a 
tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the 
shore. 

And in this graft, of course, the church has its share. 
Each church owns land — not merely that upon which it 
stands, but farms and city lots from which it derives in- 
come. Each cathedral owns large tracts; so do the 
schools and universities in which the clergy are edu- 
cated. The income from the holdings of a church con- 
stitutes what is called a "living"; these livings, which 
vary in size, are the prerogatives of the younger sons of 
the ruling families, and are intrigued and scrambled for 
in exactly the fashion which Thackeray describes in the 
eighteenth century. 

About six thousand of these "livings" are in the gift 
of great land owners; one noble lord alone disposes of 
fifty-six such plums; and needless to say, he does not 
present them to clergymen who favor radical land-taxes. 
He gives them to men like himself — autocratic to the 
poor, easy-going to members of his own class, and cynical 
concerning the grafts of grace. 

In one English village which I visited the living was 
worth seven hundred pounds, with the use of a fine man- 
sion ; as the incumbent had a large family, he lived there. 
In another place the living was worth a thousand pounds, 
and the incumbent hired a curate, himself appearing 
twice a year, on Christmas day and on the King's birth- 
day, to preach a sermon ; the rest of the time he spent in 
Paris. It is worth noting that in 1808 a law was proposed 
compelling absentee pluralists — that is, clergymen hold- 
ing more than one "living" — to furnish curates to do 



The Pkofits of Religion 71 

their work ; it might be interesting to note that this law 
met with strenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bish- 
ops voting against it without a division. Thus we may 
understand the sharp saying of Karl Marx, that the 
English clergy would rather part with thirty-eight of 
their thirty-nine articles than with one thirty-ninth of 
their income. 

There is always a plentiful supply of curates in Eng- 
land. They are the sons of the less influential ruling 
families, and of the clergy ; they have been trained at Ox- 
ford or Cambridge, and possess the one essential quali- 
fication, that they are gentlemen. Their average price is 
two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their function 
was made clear to me when I attended my first English 
tea-party. There was a wicker table, perhaps a foot and 
a half square, having three shelves, one below the other 
— on the top layer the plates and napkins, on the next 
the muffins, and on the lowest the cake. Said the host- 
ess, "Will you pass the curate, please?" I looked puz- 
zled, and she pointed. "We call that the curate, because 
it does the work of a curate." 

Graft in Tail 

As one of America's head muck-rakers, I found that 
I was popular with the British ruling classes ; they found 
my books useful in their campaigns against democracy, 
and they were surprised and disconcerted when they 
found I did not agree with their interpretation of my 
writings. I had told of corruption in American politics ; 
surely I must know that in England they had no such 
evils ! I explained that they did not have to ; their graft, 
to use their own legal phrase, was "in tail" ; the grafters 
had, as a matter of divine right, the things which in 



72 The Profits of Religion 

America they had to buy. In America, for instance, 
we had a Senate, a "Millionaire's Club", for admission to 
which the members paid in cash; but in England the 
same men came to the same position as their birth-right. 
Political corruption is not an end in itself, it is merely a 
means to exploitation; and of exploitation England has 
even more than America. When I explained this, ray 
popularity with the British ruling classes vanished 
quickly. 

As a matter of fact, England is more like America 
than she realizes; her British reticence has kept her 
ignorant about herself. I could not carry on my business 
in England, because of the libel laws, which have as 
their first principle "the greater the truth, the greater the 
libel". Englishmen read with satisfaction what I write 
about America ; but if I should turn my attention to their 
own country, they would send me to jail as they sent 
Frank Harris. The fact is that the new men in Eng- 
land, the lords of coal and iron and shipping and beer, 
have bought their way into the landed aristocracy for 
cash, just as our American senators have done ; they have 
bought the political parties with campaign gifts, pre- 
cisely as in America; they hav^e taken over the press, 
whether by outright purchase like Northcliffe, or by ad- 
vertising subsidy — both of which methods we Americans 
know. Within the last diecade or two another group has 
been coming into control; and not merely is this the 
same class of men as in America, it frequently consists 
of the same invididuals. These are the big money- 
lenders, the international financiers who are the fine and 
final flower of the capitalist system. Tliese gentlemen 
make the world their home — or, as Shakespeare puts it, 



The Profits of Religion 73 

their oyster. They know how to fit themselves to all 
environments; they are Catholics in Rome and Vienna, 
country gentlemen in London, bons vivants in Paris, 
democrats in Chicago, Socialists in Petrograd, and He- 
brews wherever they are. 

And of course, in buying the English government, 
these new classes have bought the English Church. 
Skeptics and men of the world as they are, they know 
that they must have a Religion. They have read the 
story of the French revolution, and the shadow of the 
guillotine is always over their thoughts; they see the 
giant of labor, restless in his torment, groping as in a 
nightmare for the throat of his enemy. Who can blind 
the eyes of this giant, who can chain him to his couch of 
slumber? There is but one agent, without rival — the 
Keeper of the Holy Secrets, the Deputy of the Almighty 
Awfulness, the Giver and Withholder of Eternal Life. 
Tremble, slave! Fall down and bow your forehead in 
the dust! I can see in my memory the sight that 
thrilled my childhood — my grim old Bishop, clad in his 
gorgeous ceremonial robes, stretching out his hands over 
the head of the new priest, and pronouncing that most 
deadly of all the Christian curses : 

"Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and 
whose sins thoH dost retain, they are retained !" 

Bishops and Beer 

For example, the International Shylocks wanted the 
diamond mines of South Africa — ^wanted them more 
firmly governed and less firmly taxed than could be 
arranged with the Old Man of the Boers. So the armies 
of England were sent to subjugate the country. You 
might think they would have had the good taste to 



74 The Profits of Religion 

leave the lowly Jesus out of this affair — ^but if so, you 
have missed the essential point about established re- 
ligion. The bishops, priests, and deacons are set up for 
the populace to revere, and when the robber-classes 
need a blessing upon some enterprise, then is the oppor- 
tunity for the bishops, priests and deacons to earn their 
"living." During the Boer war the blood-lust of the 
English clergy was so extreme that writers in the dig- 
nified monthly reviews felt moved to protest against 
it. When the pastors of Switzerland issued a collective 
protest against cruelties to women and children in the 
South African concentration-camps, it was the Right 
Reverend Bishop of Winchester who was brought for- 
ward to make reply. Nowadays all England is reading 
Bernhardi, and shuddering at Prussian glorification of 
war; but no one mentions Bishop Welldon of Calcutta, 
who advocated the Boer war as a means of keeping the 
nation "virile"; nor Archbishop Alexander, who said 
that it was God*s way of making "noble natures". 

The British God had other ways of improving na- 
tions — ^for example, the opium traffic. The British 
traders had been raising the poppy in India and selling 
its juice to the Chinese. They had made perhaps a 
hundred million "noble natures" by this method; and 
also they were making a hundred million dollars a year. 
The Chinese, moved by their new "virility," undertook 
to destroy some opium, and to stop the traffic ; where- 
upon it was necessary to use British battle-ships to 
punish and subdue them. Was there any difficulty in 
persuading the established church of Jesus to bless this 
holy war? There was not! Lord Shaftesbury, himself 
the most devout of Anglicans, commented with horror 



The Profits of Religion 75 

upon the attitude of the clergy, and wrote in his diary : 

I rejoice that this cruel and debasing opium war is termi- 
nated. We have triumphed in one of the most lawless, unneces- 
sary, and unfair struggles in the records of history; and Chris- 
tians have shed more heathen blood in two years, than the 
heathens have shed of Christian blood in two centuries. 

That was in 1843; for seventy years thereafter 
pious England continued to force the opium traffic 
upon protesting China, and only in the last two or three 
years has the infamy been brought to an end. Through- 
out the long controversy the attitude of the church was 
such that Li Hung Chang was moved to assert in a let- 
ter to the Anti-Opium Society : 

Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and 
China can never meet on a common ground. China views the 
whole question from a moral standpoint, England from a fiscal. 

And just as the Chinese people were poisoned with 
opium, so the English people are being poisoned with 
alcohol. Both in town and country, labor is sodden with 
it. Scientists and reformers are clamoring for restric- 
tion — and what prevents? Head and front of the op- 
position for a century, standing like a rock, has been 
the Estabhshed Church. The Rev. Dawson Bums, his- 
torian of the early temperance movement, declares that 
"among its supporters I cannot recall one Church of 
England minister of influence." When Asquith brought 
in his bill for the restriction of the traffic in beer, he 
was confronted with petitions signed by members of 
the clergy, protesting against the act. And what was 
the basis of their protest ? That beer is a food and not 
a poison ? Yes, of course ; but also that there was prop- 
erty invested in brewing it. Three hundred and thirty- 



76 The Profits of Religion 

two clergy of the diocese of Peterborough declared : 

We do strongly protest against the main provisions of the 
present bill as creating amongst our people a sense of grave in- 
justice as amounting to a confiscation of private property, 
spelling ruin for thousands of quite innocent people, and provok- 
ing deep and widespread resentment, which must do harm to our 
cause and hinder our aims. 

I have come upon references to another and even 
more plainspoken petition, signed by 1,280 clergymen ; 
but war-time facilities for research have not enabled 
me to find the text. In Prof. Henry C. Vedder's "Jesus 
Christ and the Social Question," we read : 

It was authoritatively stated a short time ago that Mr. 
Asquith's temperance bill was defeated in Parliament through 
the opposition of clergymen who had invested their savings in 
brewery stock, the profits of which might have been lessened 
by the bill. 

Also the power of the clergy, combined with the 
brewer, was sufficient to put through Parliament a 
provision that no prohibition legislation should ever 
be passed without providing for compensation to the 
owners of the industry. Today, all over America, ap- 
peals are being made to the people to eat less grain; 
the grain is being shipped to England, some of it to be 
made into beer; and a high Anglican prelate, his 
Grace the Archbishop of York, comes to America to 
urge us to increased sacrifices, and in his first news- 
paper interview takes occasion to declare that his 
church is not in favor of prohibition as a measure of 
war-time economy ! 

Anglicanism and Alcohol 

This partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully 
familiar to British radicals; they see it at work in 



The Profits of Religion 77 

every election — ^the publican confusing the voters with 
spirits, while the parson confuses them with spiritual- 
ity. There are two powerful societies in England em- 
ploying this deadly combination — ^the "Anti-Socialist 
Union" and the "Liberty and Property Defense 
League." If you scan the lists of the organizers, di- 
rectors and subsidizers of these satanic institutions, 
you find Tory politicians and landlords, prominent 
members of the higher clergy, and large-scale dealers 
in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting called 
by the "Liberty and Property Defense League," to list- 
en to a denunciation of Socialism by W. H. Mallock, a 
master sophist of Roman Catholicism; upon the plat- 
form were a bishop and half a dozen members of the 
Anglican clergy, together with the secretary of the 
Federated Brewers' Association, the Secretary of the 
Wine, Spirit, and Beer Trade Association, and three or 
four other alcoholic magnates. 

In every public library in England and many in 
America you will find an assortment of pamphlets pub- 
lished by these organizations, and scholarly volumes 
endorsed by them, in which the stock misrepresenta- 
tions of Socialism are perpetuated. Some of these writ- 
ings are brutal — setting forth the ethics of exploita- 
tion in the manner of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, the 
English clergyman who supplied for capitalist depre- 
dation a basis in pretended natural science. Said this 
shepherd of Jesus : 

A man who is bom into a world already possessed, if he 
cannot get subsistence from his parents, and if society does not 
want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of 
food, and in fact has no business to be where he is. At Nature's 



78 The Profits of Religion 

mighty feast there is no cover for him. She tells him to be gone, 
and will quickly execute her own orders. 

Such was the tone of the ruHng classes in the nine- 
teenth century ; but it was found that for some reason 
this failed to stop the growth of Socialism, and so in 
our time the clerical defenders of Privilege have grown 
subtle and insinuating. They inform us now that they 
have a deep sympathy with our fundamental pui*poses ; 
they burn with pity for the poor, and they would really 
and truly wish happiness to everyone, not merely in 
Heaven, but right here and now. However, there are 
so many complications — and so they proceed to set out 
all the anti-Socialist bug-a-boos. Here for example, 
is the Rev. James Stalker, D. D., expounding "The 
Ethics of Jesus," and admonishing us extremists : 

Efforts to transfer money and property from one set of 
hands to another may be inspired by the same passions as have 
blinded the present holders to their own highes'.; good, and may 
be accompanied with injustice as extreme as has ever been mani- 
fested by the rich and powerful. 

And again, the Rev. W. Sanday, D. D., an especially 
popular clerical author, gives us this sublime utterance 
of religion on wage-slavery : 

The world is full of mysteries, but some clear lines run 
through them, of which this is one. Where God has been so pa- 
tient, it is not for us to be impatient. 

And again, Professor Robert Flint, of Edinburgh 
University, a clergyman, author of a big book attack- 
ing Socialism, and bringing us back to the faith of our 
fathers : 

The great bulk of human misery is due, not to social ar- 
rangements, but to personal vices. 



The Profits of Religion 79 

I study Professor Flint's volume in the effort to find 
just what, if anything, he would have the church do 
about the evils of our time. I find him praising the ser- 
mons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, as being the 
proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop Westcott, 
whether he is talking to a high society congregation, 
or to one of workingmen, shows "an exquisite sense of 
knowing always where to stop." So I consulted the 
Bishop's volume, "The Social Aspects of Christianity*' 
and I see at once why he is popular with the anti- 
Socialist propagandists — ^neither I or any other man^ 
can possibly discover what he really means, or what 
he really wants done. 

I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought 
maybe if I kept on the good Bishop's trail, I might in 
the end find something a plain man could understand ; 
so I got the beautiful two-volume "Life of Brooke West- 
cott, by his Son" — and there I found an exposition of 
the social purposes of bishops ! In the year 1892 there 
was a strike in Durham, which is in the coal country ; 
the employers tried to make a cut in wages, and some 
ten thousand men walked out, and there was a long 
and bitter struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart. 
There was much consultation and correspondence on 
episcopal stationery, and at last the masters and men 
were got together, with the Bishop as arbitrator, and 
the dispute was triumphantly settled — ^how do you sup- 
pose ? On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages ! 

I know nothing quainter in the history of English 
graft than the naivete with which the Bishop's biogra- 
pher and son tells the story of this episcopal venture 
into reality. The prelate came out from the conference 



80 The Profits of Religion 

"all smiles, and well satisfied with the result of his 
day's work." As for his followers, they were in ecsta- 
cies; they "seized and waltzed one another around on 
the carriage drive as madly as ever we danced at a flow- 
er show ball. Hats and caps are thrown into the air, 
and we cheer ourselves hoarse." The Bishop proceeds 
to his palace, and sends one more communication on 
episcopal stationery — an order to all his clergy to 
"offer their humble and hearty thanks to God for our 
happy deliverance from the strife by which the diocese 
has been long afflicted." Strange to say, there were a 
few varlets in Durham who did not appreciate the 
services of the bold Bishop, and one of them wrote and 
circulated some abusive verses, in which he made ref- 
erence to the Bishop's comfortable way of life. The bi- 
ographer then explains that the Bishop was so tender- 
hearted that he suffered for the horses who drew his 
episcopal coach, and so ascetic that he would have lived 
on tea and toast if he had been permitted to. A curious 
condition in English society, where the Bishop would 
have lived on tea and toast, but was not permitted to ; 
while the working people, who didn't want to live on tea 
and toast, were compelled to ! 

Dead Cats 

For more than a hundred years the Anglican clergy 
have been fighting with every resource at their com- 
mand the liberal and enlightened men of England who 
wished to educate the masses of the people. In 1807 the 
first measure for a national school-system was de- 
nounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury as "deroga- 
tory to the authority of the Church." As a counter- 



The Profits of Religion 81 

measure, his supporters established the "National So- 
ciety for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the 
Doctrines of the Established Church" ; and the founder 
of the organization, a clergyman, advocated a bam as 
a good structure for a school, and insisted that the chil- 
dren of the workers "should not be taught beyond their 
station." In 1840 a Committee of the Privy Council on 
Education was appointed, but bowed to the will of the 
Archbishops, setting forth the decree of "their lord- 
ships" that "the first purpose of all instruction must be 
the regulation of the thoughts and habits of the chil- 
dren by the doctrine and precepts of revealed religion." 
In 1850 a bill for secular education was denounced as 
presenting to the country "a choice between Heaven or 
Hell, God or the Devil." In 1870, Forster, author of the 
still unpassed bill, wrote that while the parsons were 
disputing, the children of the poor were "growing into 
savages." 

As with Education, so with Social Reform. During 
the struggle to abolish slavery in the British colonies, 
some enthusiasts endeavored to establish the doctrine 
that Christian baptism conferred emancipation upon 
negroes who accepted it ; whereupon the Bishop of Lon- 
don laid down the formula of exploitation : "Christian- 
ity and the embracing of the gospel do not make the 
least alteration of civil property." 

Gladstone, who was a democrat when he was not 
religious, spoke of the cultured classes of England : 

In almost every one, if not every one, of the greatest political 
controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the 
franchise, whether they affected commerce, whether they affected 
religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable institu- 

6 



82 The Profits of Religion 

tion of slavery, or what subject they touched, these leisured 
classes, these educated classes, these titled classes have been in 
the wrong. 

The "Great Commoner" did not add "these religious 
classes," for he belonged to the religious classes him- 
self ; but a study of the record will supply the gap. The 
Church opposed all the reform measures which Glad- 
stone himself put through. It opposed the Reform Bill 
of 1832. It opposed all the social reforms of Lord 
Shaftesbury. This noble-hearted Englishman com- 
plained that at first only a single minister of religion 
supported him, and to the end only a few. He ex- 
pressed himself as distressed and puzzled "to find sup- 
port from infidels and non-professors; opposition or 
coldness from religionists or declaimers." 

And to our own day it has been the same. In 1894 
the House of Bishops voted solidly against the Em- 
ployers' Liability Law. The House of Bishops opposed 
Home Rule, and beat it ; the House of Bishops opposed 
Womans' Suffrage, and voted against it to the end. 
Concerning this establishment Lord Shaftesbury, him- 
self the most devout of Englishmen, used the vivid 
phrase: "this vast aquarium full of cold-blooded life." 
He told the Bishops that he would give up preaching to 
them about ecclesiastical reform, because he knew that 
they would never begin. Another member of the Brit- 
ish aristocracy, the Hon. Geo. Russell, has written of 
their record and adventures: 

They were defenders of absolutism, slavery, and the bloody 
penal code; they were the resolute opponents of every political 
or social reform; and they had their reward from the nation out- 
side Parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his palace sacked and 
burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep an engagement to 



The Profits of Religion 83 

preach lest the congregation should stone him. The Bishop of 
Litchfield barely escaped with his life after preaching at St. 
Bride's, Fleet Street. Archbishop Howley, entering Canterbury 
for his primary visitation, was insulted, spat upon, and only 
brought by a circuitous route to the Deanery, amid the execra- 
tions of the mob. On the 5th of November the Bishops of Exeter 
and Winchester were burnt in effigy close to their own palace 
gates. Archbishop Howley's chaplain complained that a dead 
cat had been thrown at him, when the Archbishop — a man of 
apostolic meekness — replied: "You should be thankful that it 
was not a live one." 

The people had reason for this conduct — as you will 
always find they have, if you take the trouble to in- 
quire. Let me quote another member of th^ English 
ruling classes, Mr. Conrad Noel, who gives "an instance 
of the procedure of Church and State about this pe- 
riod": 

In 1832 six agricultural labourers in South Dorsetshire, led 
by one of their class, George Loveless, in receipt of 9s. a week 
each, demanded the 10s. rate of wages usual in the neighbour- 
hood. The result was a reduction to 8s. An appeal was made to 
the chairman of the local bench, who decided that they must work 
for whatever their masters chose to pay them. The parson, who 
had at first promised his help, now turned against them, and the 
masters promptly reduced the wage to 7s., with a threat of 
further reduction. Loveless then formed an agricultural union, 
for which all seven were arrested, treated as convicts, and com- 
mitted to the assizes. The prison chaplain tried to bully them into 
submission. The judge determined to convict them, and directed 
that they should be tried for mutiny under an act of George III, 
specially passed to deal with the naval mutiny at the Nore. The 
grand jury were landowners, and the petty jury were farmers; 
both judge and jury were churchmen of the prevailing type. The 
judge summed up as follows: "Not for anything that you have 
done, or that I can prove that you intend to do, but for an ex- 
ample to others I consider it my duty to pass the sentence of 



84 The Profits of Religion 

seven years' penal transportation across His Majesty's high seas 
upon each and every one of you." 

Suffer Little Children 

The founder of Christianity was a man who special- 
ized in children. He was not afraid of having His dis- 
courses disturbed by them, He did not consider them 
superfluous. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven", He 
said ; and His Church is the inheritor of this tradition — 
"feed my lambs". There were children in Great Britain 
in the early part of the nineteenth century, and we may 
see what was done with them by turning to Gibbin's 
"Industrial History of England": 

Sometimes regular traffickers w^ould take the place of the 
manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory 
district, and there keep them, generally in some dark cellar, till 
they could hand them over to a mill owner in want of hands, who 
would come and examine their height, strength, and bodily ca- 
pacities, exactly as did the slave owners in the American mar- 
kets. After that the children were simply at the mercy of their 
owners, nominally as apprentices, but in reality as mere slaves, 
who got no wages, and whom it was not worth while even to 
feed and clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their 
places could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the 
parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that one idiot 
should be taken by the mill owner with every twenty sane chil- 
dren. The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse than that 
of the others. The secret of their final end has never been dis- 
closed, but we can form some idea of their awful sufferings from 
the hardships of the other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. 
The hours of their labor were only limited by exhaustion, after 
many modes of torture had been unavailingly applied to force 
continued work. Children were often worked sixteen hours a 
day, by day and by night. 

In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed 
limiting the labor of children nine years of age to four- 



The Profits of Religion 85 

teen hours a day. This would seem to have been a 
reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval cf 
Christ ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian 
employers, backed by Christian clergymen. It was in 
terfering with freedom of contract, and therefore with 
the will of Providence; it was anathema to an estab- 
lished Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in 
1918, and was in 1918 B. C, to teach the divine origin 
and sanction of the prevailing economic order. "Anu 
and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, 
worshipper of the gods" .... so begins the oldest legal 
code which has come down to us, from 2250 B. C. ; and 
the coronation service of the English church is made 
whole out of the same thesis. The duty of submission, 
not merely to divinely chosen King, but to divinely 
chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is 
implicit in the church's every ceremony, and explicit in 
m.any of its creeds. In the Litany the people petition 
for "increase of grace to hear meekly Thy Word" ; and 
here is this "Word," as little children are made to learn 
it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect 
summary of slave ethics, I do not know where to find it. 

My duty towards my neighbour is To honour and obey 

the King, and all that are put in authority under him; To sub- 
mit myself to all my govemours, teachers, spiritual pastors, and 
masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters 
.... Not to covet nor desire other men^s goods ; But to learn and 
labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that 
state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me. 

A hundred years ago one of the most popular of 
British writers was Hannah More. She and her sister 
Martha went to live in the coal-country, to teach this 



86 The Profits of Religion 

"catechism" to the children of the starving miners. 
The "Mendip Annals" is tLe title of a book in which 
they tell of their ten years' labors in a village popularly 
known as "Little Hell." In this place two hundred peo- 
ple were crowded into nineteen houses. "There is not 
one creature in it that can give a cup of broth if it would 
save a life." In one winter eighteen perished of "a put- 
rid fever", and the clergyman "could not raise a six- 
pence to save a life." 

And what did the pious sisters make of all this? 
From cover to cover you find in the "Mendip Annals" 
no single word of social protest, not even of social sus- 
picion. That wages of a shilling a day might have any- 
thing to do with moral degeneration was a proposition 
beyond the mental powers of England's most popular 
woman writer. She was perfectly content that a woman 
should be sentenced to death for stealing butter from 
a dealer who had asked what the* woman thought too 
high a price. When there came a famine, and the chil- 
dren of these mine-slaves were dying like flies, Hannah 
More bade them be happy because God had sent them 
her pious self. "In suffering by the scarcity, you have 
but shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of 
knowing the advantage you have had over many vil- 
lages in your having suffered no scarcity of religious 
instruction." And in another place she explained that 
the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to be 
grateful to the rich! 

Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been 
permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite all 
ranks of people together, to show the poor how immediately 
they are dependent upon the rich, and to show both rich and 



The Profits of Religion 87 

poor that they are all dependent upon Himself. It has also en- 
abled you to see more clearly the advantages you derive from the 
government and constitution of this country — ^to observe the 
benefits flowing from the distinction of rank and fortune, which 
has enabled the high to so liberally assist the low. 

It appears that the villagers were entirely con- 
vinced by this pious reasoning ; for they assembled one 
Saturday night and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! 
This proceeding led to a tragic consequence, for one of 
the "common people," known as Robert, "was overtaken 
by liquor," and was unable to appear at Sunday School 
next day. This fall from grace occasioned intense re- 
morse in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his mind 
for many months," records Martha More, "and despair 
seemed at length to take possession of him." Hannah 
had some conversation with him, and read him some 
suitable passages from "The Rise and Progress". "At 
length the Almighty was pleased to shine into his heart 
and give him comfort." 

Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity 
was in any way unique in the Anglican estabHshment. 
We read in the letters of Shelley how his father tor- 
mented him with Archdeacon Paley's "Evidences" as 
a cure for atheism. This eminent churchman wrote a 
book, which he himself ranked first among his wriMngs, 
called "Reasons for Contentment, addressed to th« 
Labouring Classes of the British Public." In this bode 
he not merely proved that religion "smooths all inequal- 
ities, because it unfolds a prospect which mak^ ail 
earthly distinctions nothing"; he went so far as to 
prove that, quite apart from religion, the British ex- 
ploiters were less fortunate than those to whom they 
paid a shilling a day. 



88 The Profits of Religion 

Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of the 
labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes, are not 
hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a pleasure. It is 
an exercise of attention and contrivance, which, whenever it is 
successful, produces satisfaction This is lost among abund- 
ance. 

And there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a 
philanthropist as Anglicanism ever produced, an ardent 
supporter of Bible societies and foreign missions, a 
champion of the anti-slavery movement, and also of the 
ruthless "Combination Laws,'* which denied to British 
wage-slaves all chance of bettering their lot. Wilber- 
force published a "Practical View of the System of 
Christianity", in which he told unblushingly what the 
Anglican establishment is for. In a chapter which he 
described as "the basis of all politics," he explained 
that the purpose of religion is to remind the poor 

That their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the 
hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its 
duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that the ob- 
jects about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are not worth 
the contest; that the peace of mind, which Religion offers in- 
discriminately to all ranks, affords more true satisfaction than 
all the expensive pleasures which are beyond the poor man's 
reach; that in this view the poor have the advantage; that if 
their superiors enjoy more abundant comforts, they are also ex- 
posed to many temptations from which the inferior classes are 
happily extempted; that, "having food and raiment, they should 
be therewith content," since their situation in life, with all its 
evils, is better than they have deserved at the hand of God; and 
finally, that all human distinctions will soon be done away, and 
the true followers of Christ will all, as children of the same 
Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same heavenly 
inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of Christianity on the 
temporal well-being of political communities. 



The Profits of Religion 89 

The Court Circular 

The Anglican system of submission has been trans- 
planted intact to the soil of America. When King George 
the Third lost the soverieignty of the colonies, the bish- 
ops of his divinely inspired church lost the control 
of thie clergy across the seas; but this reiyolution was 
purely one of Church politics — in doctrine and ritual the 
"Protestant Episcopal Church of America" remained in 
every way Anglican. The liittle children of our free re- 
public are taught the same slave-catechism, "to order 
myself lowly and reverently to all my betters." The only 
difference is that instiead of being told "to honour and 
obey the King," they are told "to honour and obey the 
civil authority." 

It is the Church of Good Society in England, and it 
is the same in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Balti- 
more, Washington, Charleston. Just as our ruling classes 
have provided themselves with imitation English schools 
and imitation English manners and imitation English 
clothes — so in their Heaven they have provided an imi- 
tation English monarch. I wonder how many Americans 
realize the treason to democracy they are committing 
whien they allow their children to be taught a symbolism 
and liturgy based upon absolutist ideas. I take up the 
hymn-book — not the English, but the sturdy, independ- 
ent, democratic American hymn-book. I have not opened 
it for twenty years, yet the greater part of its contents 
is as familiar to me as the syllables of my own name. I 
read: 

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee, 
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; 
Cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Thee, 
Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be! 



90 The Profits of Religion 

One might quote a hundred other hymns made thus 
out of royal imagery. I turn at random to the part head- 
ied "General," and find that there is hardly one hymn in 
which there is not "king," "throne," or some image of 
homage and flattery. The first hymn begins — 

Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory; 
To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray. 

And the second — 

Christ, whose glory fills the skies — 

And the third — 

Lord of all being, throned afar, 
Thy glory flames from sun and star. 

There is a court in Heaven above, to which all good 
Britons look up, and about which they read with exactly 
the same thrills as they read the Court Circular. The 
two courts have the same ethical code and the same man- 
ners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention, 
self-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and 
precise ; their existence consisting of an endless round of 
ceremonies, and they being incapable of boredom. No 
member of the Royal Family can escape this regime 
even if he wishes ; and no more can any member of the 
Holy Family — ^not even the meek and lowly Jesus, who 
chose a carpenter's wife for his mother, amd showed all 
his earthly days a preference for lovc^ sodety. 

This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never 
carried weapons, he could not bear to have so much as a 
human ear cut off in his presence. But see how he figures 
in the Court Circular: 

The Son of God goes forth to war, 
A kingly crown to gain: 

His blood-red banner streams afar: 
Who follows in His train? 



The Profits of Religion 91 

This carpenter's son was one of the most unpreten- 
tious men on earth ; utterly simple and honest — he would 
not even let anyone praise him. When some one called 
him "good Master," he answered, quickly, "Why callest 
thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, 
God." But this simplicity has been taken with depreca- 
tion by his church, which persists in heaping compli- 
ments upon him in conventional, courtly style : 

The company of angels 

Are praising Thee on high; 
And mortal men, and all things 

Created, make reply: 
All Glory, laud and honour, 

To Thee, Redeemer, King 

The impression a modern man gets from all this is 
the unutterable boredom that Heaven must be. Can one 
imagine a more painful occupation than that of the saints 
—casting down their golden crowns around the glassy 
sea — unless it be that of the Triumvirate itself, compelled 
to sit through eternity watching these saints, and listen- 
ing to their mawkish and superfluous compliments ! 

But one can understand that such things are neces- 
sary in a monarchy ; they are necessary if you are going 
to have Good Society, and a Good Society church. For 
Good Society is precisely the same thing as Heaven; 
that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, 
and those few are bored. They spend their time going 
through costly formalities — not because they enjoy it, 
but because of its effect upon the populace, which reads 
about them and sees their pictures in the papers, and 
now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their 
physical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, 
or the coaching-parade. 



92 The Profits of Religion 

Horn-blowing 

I know the Church of Good Society in America, hav- 
ing studied it from the inside. I was an extraordinarily 
devout little boy ; one of my earliest recollections — I can- 
not have been more than four years of age — is of carry- 
ing a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy car- 
ried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I remem- 
ber asking if I might say the "Lord's prayer" in this 
fascinating play ; and my mother's reply : "If you say it 
reverently." When I was thirteen, I attended service, of 
my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm, every 
single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of 
fifteen I was teaching Sunday-school. It was the Church 
of the Holy Communion, at Sixth Avenue and Twentieth 
Street, New York ; and those who know the city will un- 
derstand that this is a peculiar location — precisely half 
way between the homes of some of the oldest and most 
august of the city's aristocracy, and some of the Vilest 
and most filthy of the city's slums. The aristocracy were 
paying for the church, and occupied the best pews ; they 
came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the Ger- 
mans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, 
gracious, yet infinitely aloof. The service was made for 
them — as all the rest of the world is made for them ; the 
populace was permitted to occupy a fringe of vacant 
seats. 

The assistant clergyman was an Englishman, and a 
gentleman ; orthodox, yet the warmest man's heart I have 
ever known. He could not bear to have the church re- 
main entirely the church of the rich; he would go per- 
sistently into the homes of the poor, visiting the old slum 
women in their pitifully neat little kitchens, and luring 
their children with entertainments and Christmas candy. 



The Profits of Religion 93 

They were corralled into the Sunday-school, where it 
was my duty to give them what they needed for the 
health of their souls. 

I taught them out of a book of kssons ; and one Sun- 
day it would be Moses in the Bulrushes, and next Sunday 
it would be Jonah and the Whale, and next Sunday it 
would be Joshua blowing down the walls of Jericho. 
These stories were reasonably entertaining, but they 
seemed to me futile, not to the point. There were little 
morals tagged to them, but thiese lacked relationship to 
the livies of little slum-boys. Be good and you will be 
happy, love the Lord and all will be well with you; 
which was about as t-rue and as practical as the procedure 
of the Fijians, blowing horns to driye away a pestilence. 

I had a mind, you see, and I was using it. I was read- 
ing the papers, and watching politics and business. I 
followed the fates of my little slum-boys — and what I 
saw was that Tammany Hall was getting them. The 
liquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the panders and 
the pimps, the crap-shooters and the petty thieves — all 
these were paying the policeman and the politician for a 
chance to prey upon my boys; and when the boys got 
into trouble, as they were continually doing, it was the 
clergyman who consoled them in prison — ^but it was the 
Tammany leader who saw the judge and got them out. 
So these boys got their lesson, even earlier in life than I 
got mine — that the church was a kind of amiable fake, a 
pious horn-blowing ; while the real thing was Tammany. 

I talked about this with the vestrymen and the ladies 
of Good Society ; they were deeply pained, but I noticed 
that they did nothing practical about it; and gradually, 
as I went on to investigate, I discovered the reason — 



94 The Profits of Religion 

that their incomes came from real estate, traction, gas 
and other interests, which were contributing the main 
part of the campaign expenses of the corrupt Tammany 
machine, and of its equally corrupt rival. So it appeared 
that these immaculate ladies and gentlemen, aus dem Ei 
gegossen, were themselves engaged, unconsciously, per- 
haps, but none the less effectively, in spreading the pesti- 
lence against which they were blowing their religious 
horns ! 

So little by little I saw my beautiful church for what 
it was and is : a great capitalist interest, an integral and 
iessential part of a gigantic predatory system. I saw that 
its ethical and cultural and artistic features, however sin- 
cerely they might be meant by individual clergymen, 
were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into the 
trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on 
probing into the secret life of the great Metropolis of 
Mammon, and laying bare its infamres to the world, I 
saw the attitude of the church to such work ; I miet, not 
sympathy and understanding, but sneers and denuncia- 
tion — until the venerable institution which had once 
seemed dignified and noble became to me as a sepulchre 
of corruption. 

Trinity Carporation 

There stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall 
Street a towering brown-stone edifice, one of the most 
beautiful and most famous churches in America. As 
a child I have walked through its church yard and read 
the quaint and touching inscriptions on its grave- 
stones ; when I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, 
it seemed to me a sublime thing that here in the very 
heart of the world's infamy there should be raised, 



The Profits of Religion 95 

like a finger of warning, this symbol of Eternity and 
Judgment. Its great bell rang at noon-time, and all the 
traders and their wage-slaves had to listen, whether 
they would or no ! Such was Old Trinity to my young 
soul ; and what is it in reality ? 

The story was told some ten years ago by Charles 
Edward Russell. Trinity Corporation is the name of 
the concern, and it is one of the great landlords of New 
York. In the early days it bought a number of farms, 
and these it has held, as the city has grown up around 
them, until in 1908 their value was estimated at any- 
where from forty to a hundred million dollars. The true 
amount has never been made public ; to quote KusselFs 
words : 

The real owners of the property are the communicants of the 
church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent 
of the property, nor the amoimt of the revenue therefrom, nor 
what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even the 
simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. The man- 
agement is a self perpetuating body, without responsibility and 
without supervision. 

And the writer goes on to describe the business 
policy of this great corporation, which is simply the 
English land system complete. It refuses to sell the 
land, but rents it for long periods, and the tenant builds 
the house, and then when the lease expires, the Corpor- 
ation takes over the house for a nominal sum. Thus it 
has purchased houses for as low as $200, and made 
them into tenements, and rented them to the swarming 
poor for a total of fifty dollars a month. The houses 
were not built for tenements, they have no conveni- 
ences, they are not fit for the habitation of animals. 



96 The Profits of Religion 

The article, in Everybody's Magazine for July, 1908, 
gives pictures of them, which are horrible beyond be- 
lief. To quote the writer again : 

Decay, neglect and squalor seem to brood wherever Trinity 
is an owner. Gladly would I give to such a charitable and benev- 
olent institution all possible credit for a spirit of improvement 
manifested anywhere, but I can find no such manifestation. I 
have tramped the Eighth Ward day after day with a list of 
Trinity properties in my hand, and of all the tenement houses 
that stand there on Trinity land, I have not found one that is 
not a disgrace to civilization and to the City of New York. 

It happens that I once knew the stately prelate who 
presided over this Corporation of Corruption. I imagine 
how he would have shivered and turned pale had some 
angel whispered to him what devilish utterances were 
some day to proceed from the lips of the little cherub 
with shining face and shining robes who acted as the 
bishop's attendant in the stately ceremonials of the 
Church! Truly, even into the goodly company of the 
elect, even to the most holy places of the temple, Satan 
makes his treacherous way! Even under the conse- 
crated hands of the bishop ! For while the bishop was 
blessing me and taking me into the company of the 
sanctified, I was thinking about what the papers had 
reported, that the bishop's wife had been robbed of 
fifty thousand dollars worth of jewels ! It did not seem 
quite in accordance with the doctrine of Jesus that a 
bishop's wife should possess fifty thousand dollars 
worth of jewels, or that she should be setting the blood- 
hounds of the police on the train of a human being. I 
asked my clergyman friend about it, and remember his 
patient explanation — that the bishop had to know all 
classes and conditions of men : his wife had to go among 



The Profits of Religion 97 

the rich as well as the poor, and must be able to dress 
so that she would not be embarrassed. The Bishop at 
this time was making it his life-work to raise a million 
dollars for the beginning of a great Episcopal cathe- 
dral; and this of course compelled him to spend mucn 
time among the rich ! 

The explanation satisfied me ; for of course I thought 
there had to be cathedrals — despite the fact that both 
St. Stephen and St. Paul had declared that "the Lord 
dwelleth not in temples made with hands." In the 
twenty-five years which have passed since that time the 
good Bishop has passed to his eternal reward, but the 
mighty structure which is a monument to his visita- 
tions among the rich towers over the city from its 
vantage-point on Momingside Heights. It is called the 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine ; and knowing what I 
know about the men who contributed its funds, and 
about the general functions of the churches of the 
Metropolis of Mammon, it would not seem to me less 
holy if it were built, like the monuments of ancient 
ravagers, out of the skulls of human beings. 

Spiritual Interpretation 

There remains to say a few words as to the intellec- 
tual functions of the Fifth Avenue clergy. Let us 
realize at the outset that they do their preaching in the 
name of a proletarian rebel, who was crucified as a 
common criminal because, as they said, "He stirreth up 
the people." An embarrassing "Savior" for the church 
of Good Society, you might imagine ; but they manage 
to fix him up and make him respectable. 

I remember something analogous in my own boy- 



98 The Profits of Religion 

hood. All day Saturday I ran about with the little 
street rowdies, I stole potatoes and roasted them in 
vacant lots, I threw mud from the roofs of apartment- 
houses; but on Saturday night I went into a tub and 
was lathered and scrubbed, and on Sunday I came forth 
in a newly brushed suit, a clean white collar and a shin- 
ing tie and a slick derby hat and a pair of tight gloves 
which made me impotent for mischief. Thus I was 
taken and paraded up Fifth Avenue, doing my part of 
the duties of Good Society. And all church-members 
go through this same performance ; the oldest and most 
venerable of them steal potatoes and throw mud all week 
— and then take a hot bath of repentance and put on 
the clean clothing of piety. In this same way their 
ministers of religion are occupied to scrub and clean and 
dress up their disreputable Founder — to turn him from 
a proletarian rebel into a stained-glass-window divinity. 

The man who really lived, the carpenter's son, they 
take out and crucify all over again. As a young poet 
has phrased it, they nail him to a jeweled cross with 
cruel nails of gold. Come with me to the New Golgotha 
and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of gold in 
your hands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! 
Here is a sledge, in the form of a dignified and scholarly 
volume, published by the exclusive house of Scribner, 
and written by the Bishop of my boyhood, the Bishop 
whose train I carried in the stately ceremonials : "The 
Citizen in His Relation to the Industrial Situation," by 
the Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter, D. D., L. L. 
D., D. C. L. — a course of lectures delivered before the 
sons of our predatory classes at Yale University^ under 
the endowment of a millionaire mining king, founder 



The Profits of Religion 99 

of the Phelps-Dodge corporation, which the other day- 
carried out the deportation from their homes of a thou- 
sand striking miners at Bisbee, Arizona. Says- my 
Bishop: 

Christ did not denounce wealth any more than he denounced 
pauperism. He did not abhor money; he used it. He did not 
abhor the company of rich men; he sought it. He did not in- 
variably scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of expend- 
iture. 

And do you think that the late Bishop of J. P. Mor- 
gan and Company stands alone as an utterer of schol- 
arly blasphemy, a driver of golden nails ? In the course 
of this book there will march before us a long line of 
the clerical retainers of Privilege, on their way to the 
New (Jolgotha to crucify the carpenter's son : the Rec- 
tor of the Money Trust, the Preacher of the Coal Trust, 
the Priest of the Traction Trust, the Archbishop of 
Tammany, the Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club, the 
Pastor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Ed- 
itor of the New Haven, the Sunday-school Superintend- 
ent of Standard Oil. We shall try the weight of their 
jewelled sledges — ^books, sermons, newspaper-inter- 
views, after-dinner speeches — ^wherewith they pound 
their golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands 
and feet of the proletarian Christ. 

Here, for example, is Rev. F. G. Peabody, Professor 
of Christian Morals at Harvard University. Prof. Pea- 
body has written several books on the social teachings 
of Jesus ; he quotes the most rabid of the carpenter^s 
denunciations of the rich, and says : 

Is it possible that so obvious and so limited a message as 
this, a teaching so slightly distinguished from the curbstone 



100 The Profits of Religion 

rhetoric of a modem agitator, can be an adequate reproduction 
of the scope and power of the teaching of Jesus ? 

The question answers itself: Of course not! For 
Jesus was a gentleman ; he is the head of a church at- 
tended by gentlemen, of universities where gentlemen 
are educated. So the Professor of Christian Morals 
proceeds to make a subtle analysis of Jesus' actions; 
demonstrating therefrom that there are three proper 
uses to be made of great wealth: first, for almsgiving 
— "The poor ye have always with you!"; second, for 
beauty and culture — ^buying wine for wedding-feasts, 
and ointment-boxes and other objets de vertu; and 
third, "stewardship," "trusteeship" — ^which is plain 
English is "Big Business." 

I have used the illustration of soap and hot water; 
one can imagine he is actually watching the scrubbing 
process, seeing the proletarian Founder emerging all 
new and respectable under the brush of this capitalist 
professor. The professor has a rule all his own for 
reading the scriptures ; he tells us that when there are 
two conflicting sayings, the rule of interpretation is 
that "the more spiritual is to be preferred." Thus, one 
gospel makes Jesus say: "Blessed are ye poor." An- 
other puts it : "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The first 
one is crude and literal ; obviously the second must be 
what Jesus meant ! In other words, the professor and 
his church have made for their economic masters a 
treacherous imitation virtue to be taught to wage- 
slaves, a quality of submissiveness, impotence and futil- 
ity, which they call by the name of "spirituality". This 
virtue they exalt above all others, and in its name they 



The Profits of Religion lOl 

cut from the record of Jesus everything which has re- 
lation to the realities of life ! 

So here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plum- 
mer chair at Harvard, writing on "Jesus Christ and the 
Social Question," and explaining: 

The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its radicalism, 
but in its externalism. It proposes to accomplish by economic 
change what can be attained by nothing less than spiritual re- 
generation. 

And here is "The Churchman," organ of the Episco- 
palians of New York, warning us : 

It is necessary to remember that something more than ma- 
terial and temporal considerations are involved. There are things 
of more importance to the purposes of God and to the welfare 
of humanity than economic readjustments and social amelioration. 

And again : 

Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing 
upon clergy and laity alike, to address their religious energies 
too exclusively to those tasks whereby human life may be made 
more abundant and wholesome materially We need con- 
stantly to be reminded that spiritual things come first. 

There come before my mental eye the elegant ladies 
and gentlemen for whom these comfortable sayings are 
prepared : the vestrymen and pillars of the Church, with 
black frock coats and black kid gloves and shiny top- 
hats ; the ladies of Good Society with their Easter cos- 
tumes in pastel shades, their gracious smiles and their 
sweet intoxicating odors. I picture them as I have seen 
them at St. George's, where that aged wild boar, Pier- 
pont Morgan, the elder, used to pass the collection 
plate ; at Holy Trinity, where they drove downtown in 
old-fashioned carriages with grooms and footmen sit- 
ting like twin statues of insolence; at St. Thomas', 



102 The Profits of Religion 

where you might see all the "Four Hundred" on exhi- 
bition at once ; at St. Mary the Virgin's, where the choir 
paraded through the aisles, swinging costly incense into j 
my childish nostrils, the stout clergyman walking alone 
with nose upturned, carrying on his back a jewelled 
robe for which some adoring female had paid sixty 
thousand dollars. "Spiritual things come first?" Ah, 
yes ! "Seek first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled 
robes shall be added unto you !" And it is so dreadful 
about the French and German Socialists, who, as the 
"Churchman" reports, "make a creed out of material- 
ism." But then, what is this I find in one issue of the 
organ of the "Church of Good Society" ? 

Business men contribute to the Y. M. C. A. because they 
realize that if their employes are well cared for and religiously 
influenced, they can be of greater service in business! 

Who let that material cat out of the spiritual bag? 



BOOK THREE 

The Church of the Servant-girls 

Was it for this — ^that prayers like these 
Should spend themselves about thy feet, 

And with hard, overlabored knees 

Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat 

Bosoms too lean to suckle sons 

And fruitless as their orisons ? 

Was it for this — ^that men should make 
Thy name a fetter on men's necks. 

Poor men made poorer for thy sake. 
And women withered out of sex ? 

Was it for this — ^that slaves should be — 

Thy word was passed to set men free ? 

Swinburne. 



103 



The Pkofits of Religion 105 



Charity 

As everyone knows, the "society lady" is not an in- 
dependent and self-sustaining phenomenon. For every 
one of these exquisite, sweet-smelling creatures that 
you meet on Fifth Avenue, there must be at home a 
large number of other women who live sterile and 
empty lives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after 
their luckier sisters. But these "domestics" also are 
human beings; they have emotions — or, in religious 
parlance, "souls ;" it is necessary to provide a discipline 
to keep them from appropriating the property of their 
mistresses, also to keep them from becoming enceinte. 
So it comes about that there are two cathedrals in New 
York: one, St. John the Divine, for the society ladies, 
and the other, St. Patrick's, for the servant-girls. The 
latter is located on Fifth Avenue, where its towering 
white spires divide with the homes of the Vanderbilts 
the interest of the crowds of sight-seers. Now, early 
every Sunday morning, before "Good Society" has open- 
ed its eyes, you may see the devotees of the Irish snake- 
charmer hurrying to their orisons, each with a little 
black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do in- 
side? What are they taught about life? This is the 
question to which we have next to give attention. 

Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and in- 



106 The Profits of Religion 

surance magnate of New York, favored me with his justi- 
hcation of his own career and activities. He mentioned 
his chanties, and, speaking as one man of the world to 
another, he said: "The reason I put them into the hands 
Of Cathohcs IS not religious, but because I find they are 
efficient in such matters. They don't ask questions, they 
do what you want them to do, and do it economically." 
I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implica- 
tions of the remark-like Agassiz when some one gave 
him a fossil bone, and his mind set to work to recon- 
struct the creature. 

When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it 
was long hours and improper working-conditions which 
drove him to desperation; they do not ask if police and 
politicians are getting a rake-oflF from the saloon, or if 
traction magnates are using it as an agency for the con- 
trolling of votes; they do not plunge into prohibition 
movements or good government campaigns— they simply 
take the man in, at a standard price, and the patient 
slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then turn 
him out for society to make him drunk again. That is 
^'charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Cathol- 
icism. They have been at it for a thousand years, clean- 
mg up loathsome and unsightly messes— "plague, pesti- 
lence and famine, battle and murder and sudden death." 
Yet— puzzling as it would seem to anyone not religious 
—there were never so many messes, never so many dif- 
ferent kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand 
years of charitable activity ! 

But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient' 
spider, building and rebuilding his web across a door- 



t 



The Profits of Religion 107 

way; like soldiers under the command of a ruling class 
with a "muddling through" tradition — 

Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die. 

And so of course all magnates and managers of industry 
who have messes to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps 
to be carted away quickly and without fuss, turn to the 
Catholic Church for this service, no matter what their 
personal religious beliefs or lack of beliefs may be. Some- 
where in the neighborhood of every steel-mill, every 
coal-mine or other place of industrial danger, you will 
find a Catholic hospital, with its slave-sisters and attend- 
ants. Once when I was "muck-raking" near Pittsburgh, 
I w&nt to one of these places to ask information as to the 
frequency of industrial accidents and the fate of the vic- 
tims. The "Mother Superior" received me with a look 
of polite dismay. "These concerns pay us!" she said. 
"You must see that as a matter of business it would not 
do for us to talk about them." 

Obey and keep silence : that is the Catholic law. And 
precisely as it is with the work of nursing and almsgiv- 
ing, so it is with the work of vote-getting, the elaborate 
system of policemen and saloon-keepers and ward-heelers 
which the Catholic machine controls. This industry of 
vote-getting is a comparatively new one ; but the Church 
has been handling the masses for so many centuries that 
she quickly learned this new way of "democracy," and 
has established her supremacy over all rivals. She has 
the schools for training the children, the confessional foi 
controlling the women; she has the intellectual machin- 
ery, the purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has 
the supreme advantage that the rank and file of her 



108 (The Profits op Religion 

mighty host really believe what she teaches ; they do not 
have to listen to table-rappings and flounder through 
swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster their 
hope of the survival of personality after death I 

So it comes about that our captains of industry and 
finance have been driven to a more or less reluctant alli- 
ance with the Papacy. The Church is here, and her fol- 
lowers are here, before the war several hundred thousand 
of them pouring into the country every year. It is no 
longer possible to do without Catholics in America; not 
merely do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal 
mined, and dishes washed, but franchises have to be 
granted, tariff-schedules adjusted, juries and courts man- 
ipulated, police trained and strikes crushed. tJnder our 
native political system, for these purposes millions of 
votes are needed ; and these votes belong to people of a 
score of nationalities — Irish and German and Italian and 
French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and Portu- 
guese and Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic 
Church can handle these polyglot hordes? Who can fur- 
nish teachers and editors and politicians familiar with all 
these languages? 

Considering how complex is the service, the price is 
extremely moderate — the mere actual expenses of the 
campaign, the cost of red fire and torch-lights, of liquor 
and newspaper advertisements. The rest may come out 
of the public till, in the form of exemption from taxation 
of church buildings and lands, a share of the public funds 
for charities and schools, the control of the police for 
saloon-keepers and district leaders, the control of police- 
courts and magistrates, of municipal administrations and 
boards of education, of legislatures and governors ; with 



The Profits of Religion 109 

a few higher offices now and then, to flatter our sacred 
self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Su$)reme Court 
Bench ; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary 
prestige, some cabinet-members and legislators and jus- 
tices to attend High Mass, and be blessed in public by- 
Catholic prelates and dignitaries. 

You think this is empty rhetoric — you comfortable, 
easy-going, ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in 
your classic shades, absorbed in "the passionless pursuit 
of passionless intelligence" — while the world about you 
slides down into the pit! You ladies of Good Society, 
practicing your "sweet little charities," pursuing your 
"dear little ideals," raising your families of one or two 
lovely children — ^while Irish and French-Canadians and 
Italians and Portuguese and Hungarians are breeding 
their dozens and scores, and preparing to turn you out of 
your country! 

God's Armor 

You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," 
Browning's study of the psychology of a modem Cath- 
olic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware of modem thought, 
this bishop ; he is a man of culture, who wants to have 
beauty about him, to be a "cabin passenger" : 

There's power in me and will to dominate 
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else; 
In many ways I need mankind's respect, 
Obedience, and the love that's bom of fear. 

He wishes that he had faith — ^f aith in anything ; he 
understands that faith is all-important — 

Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat. 
But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it — 

But paint a fire, it will not therefore bum! 



110 The Profits of Religion 

He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for 
truth, but he asks what there would be in it for him — 

State the facts, 
Read the text right, emancipate the world — 
The emancipated world enjoys itself 
With scarce a thank-you. Blougram told it first 
It could not owe a farthing, — ^not to him 
More than St. Paul! 

So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily- 
conscious of the contempt of intellectual people. 

I pine among my million imbeciles 

(You think) aware some dozen men of sense 

Eye me and know me, whether I believe 

In the last winking virgin as I vow, 

And am a fool, or disbelieve in her, 

And am a knave. 

But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon 
the chain of faith, that is what 

Gives all the advantage, makes the difference, 
With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule. 
We are their lords, or they are free of us, 
Just as we tighten or relax that hold. 

So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in 
his role of shepherd to those whom he calls "King 
Bomba's lazzaroni," and "ragamuffin saints." 

I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see 
what Bishop Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and 
his ragamuffin saints here in this new country of the 
far West. It is easy to acquire the information, for the 
saleswoman is polite and the prices fit my purse. Amer- 
ica is going to war, and Catholic boys are being drafted 
to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a 
firmly bound little pamphlet called "Gk)d's Armor, a 
Prayer Book for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by 



The Profits of Religion 111 

the G. R. C. Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Ob- 
stat" of the "Censor Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" 
of "Johannes Josephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici*' 
— ^which last you may at first fail to recognize as a well- 
known city on the Mississippi River. Do you not feel 
the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past creep- 
ing over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? 
Such is the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can 
make even St. Louis sound mysterious! 

In this booklet I get no information as to the com- 
mercial causes of war, nor about the part which the 
clerical vote may have played throughout Europe in 
supporting military systems. I do not even find any- 
thing about the sacred cause of democracy, the resolve 
of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule. 
Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps 
silent, and who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of 
terrors both of body and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, 
marking yourself with crosses, performing genu- 
flexions, mumbling magic formulas in the trenches — 
how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter 
by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, 
since first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the 
, hearts of men ! 

f I quote from this little book : 

Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer 
yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin. 
Make the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore Thee and 
give Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be for Thy Glory, 
and for the salvation of my immortal soul. 

During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your 
prayers need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few of 



112 The Profits of Religion 

these short ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat them. 
They will serve to recall God to your heart and will strengthen 
you and comfort you. I 

You remember a while back about the prayer- 
wheels of the Thibetans. The Catholic religion was 
founded before the Thibetan, and is less progressive; 
it does not welcome mechanical devices for saving labor. 
You have to use your own vocal apparatus to keep your- 
self from hell; but the process has been made as eco- 
nomical as possible by kindly dispensations of the Pope. 
Thus, each time that you say "My God and my all," 
you get fifty days indulgence ; the same for "My Jesus, 
mercy," and the same for "Jesus, my Gk)d, I love Thee 
above all things." For "Jesus, Mary, Joseph," you get 
three hundred days — which would seem by all odds the 
best investment of your spare breath. 

And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer 
before Battle" ; "Prayer for a Happy Death" ; "Prayer 
in Temptation"; "Prayer before and after Meals"; 
"Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a long 
March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer 
for Those in their Agony" — I cannot bear to read them, 
hardly to list them. I remember standing in a cathe- 
dral "somewhere in France" during the celebration of 
some special Big Magic. There was brilliant white light, 
and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a 
huge organ, and a clamor of voices, high, clear voices of 
young boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of men 
in a pit reaching up, trying to climb over the top 
of one another. It sent a shudder into the depths of my 
soul. There is nothing left in the modem world which 
can carry the mind so far back into the ancient night- 



The Profits of Religion 113 

mare of anguish and terror which was once the mental 
Hfe of mankind, as these Roman Cathohc incantations 
with their frantic and ceaseless importunity. They have 
even brought in the sex-spell ; and the poor, frightened 
soldier-boy, who has perhaps spent, the night with a 
prostitute, now prostrates himself before a holy Wom- 
an-being who is lifted high above the shames of the 
flesh, and who stirs the thrills of awe and affection 
which his mother brought to him in early childhood. 
Read over the phrases of this "Litany of the Blessed 
Virgin" : 

Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin 
of Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother 
most pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother un- 
defiled. Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable. Mother 
of good counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our Savior. 
Virgin most prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most re- 
nowned. Virgin most powerful. Virgin most merciful. Virgin 
most faithful. Mirror of justice. Seat of wisdom. Cause of our 
joy. Spiritual vessel. Vessel of honor. Singular vessel of devo- 
tion. Mystical rose. Tower of David. Tower of ivory. House 
of gold. Ark of the covenant. Gate of heaven. Morning Star. 
Health of the sick. Refuge of sinners. Comforter of the afflicted. 
Help of Christians. Queen of Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. 
Queen of Prophets. Queen of Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. 
Queen of Confessors. Queen of Virgins. Queen of all Saints. 
Queen conceived without original sin. Queen of the most holy 
Rosary. Queen of Peace, Pray for us. 

Thanksgivings 

For another five cents — ^how cheaply a man of in- 
sight can obtain thrills in this fantastic world ! — ^I pur- 
chase a copy of the "Messenger of the Sacred Heart", 
a magazine published in New York, the issue for Oc- 
tober, 1917. There are pages of advertisements of 



114 The Profits of Religion 

schools and colleges with strange titles: "Immaculata 
Seminary", "Holy Cross Academy", "Holy Ghost In- 
stitute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child Jesus". 
The leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the 
Apostleship of Prayer among the Young"; and then 
"Sister Clarissa" writes a poem telling us "What are 
Sorrows" ; and then we are given a story called "Prayer 
for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells us 
about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father 
tells us about the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we 
learn that in July, 1917, it distributed 11,699 beads, 
and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours of adora- 
tion; and then the faithful are given a form of letter 
which they are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secre- 
tary of War, imploring him to intimate to the French 
government that France should withdraw from one of 
her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval 
America in exempting priests from being drafted to 
fight for their country. And then there is a "Question 
Box" — ^just like the Hearst newspapers, only instead of 
asking whether she should allow him to kiss her before 
he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what 
is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and 
is Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the 
teeth from the night before, would it break the fast to 
swallow it before Holy Communion. (No, I am not in- 
venting this.) 

I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and 
pointed out how deftly the Church has managed to slip 
in a prayer for worldly prosperity. But the Catholic 
Church does not show any squeamishness in dealing 
with its "million imbeciles", its "rough, purblind mass". 



The Profits of Religion 115 

There is a department of the little magazine entitled 
"Thanksgiving", and a statement at the top that "the 
total number of Thanksgivings for the month is 2,143,- 
911." I am suspicious of that, as of German i^eports of 
prisoners taken ; but I give the statement as it stands, 
not going through the list and picking out the crudest, 
but taking them as they come, classified by states : 

GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and 
publication were promised, for others the Badge of Promoter's 
Cross was used, for others the prayers of the Associates had 
been asked. 

Alabama — Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during 
storm. 

Alaska — Safe return, goods found. 

Arizona — ^Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness 
averted, safe delivery. 

British Honduras — Successful operation. 

California — Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two success- 
ful examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in salary, re- 
turn to religious duties, sight regained, medal won, Baptism, 
preservation from disease, contract obtained, success in business, 
hearing restored, Easter duty made, happy death, automobile 
sold, mind restored, house found, house rented, successful jour- 
ney, business sold, quarrel averted, return of friends, two suc- 
cessful operations. 

And for all these miraculous performances the 
Catholic machine is harvesting the price day by day — 
harvesting with that ancient fervor which the Latin 
poet described as "auri sacra fames". As Christopher 
Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gk)ld is a 
wonderful thing. By means of gold we can even get 
souls into Paradise." 

The Holy Roman Empire 

The system thus self -revealed you admit is appalling 



116 The Profits of Religioi^ 

in its squalor ; but you say that at least it is milder and 
less perilous than the Church which burned Giordano 
Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence of the Cath- 
olic Church is that it does not change ; semper eadem is 
its motto : the same yesterday, today and forever — the 
same in Washington as in Rome or Madrid — the same 
in a modern democracy as in the Middle Ages. The 
Catholic Church is not primarily a religious organiza- 
tion; it is a political organization, and proclaims the 
fact, and defies those who would shut it up in the re- 
ligious field. The Rev. S. B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of 
divinity, explains in his "Elements of Ecclesiastical 
Law": 

Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church 
consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to 
command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a 
perfect society or sovereign state. This theory is false; for the 
Church, as was seen, is vested Jure divino vdth power, (1) to 
make laws; (2) to define and apply them (potestas judicialis); 
(3) to punish those who violate her laws (potestas coercitiva). 

And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal 
and repeated proclamation of infallible popes. Here is 
the "Syllabus of Errors", issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 
8th, 1864, declaring in precise language that 

The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess 
and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true. 

It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power 
shall require the permission of the civil power in order to the 
exercise of its authority. 

Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of 
the Church are affirmed thus: 

She has the right to require the state not to leave every man 
free to profess his own religion. 



The Profits of Religion . 117 

She has the right to exercise her power without the permis- 
sion or consent of the state. 

She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and 
state. 

She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall 
be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others. 

She has the right to prevent the state from granting the 
public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating 
from it. 

She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free 
expression of opinion. 

You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and un- 
chastened. You, who think that liberty of conscience 
is the basis of civilization, ought at least to know what 
the Catholic Church has to say about the matter. Here 
is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About Protestantism 
of Today", a book published in Boston and extensively 
circulated by American Catholics : 

Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is like- 
wise the soul of modem rationalism and philosophy. It is one of 
those impossibilities which only the levity of a superficial reason 
can regard as admissable. But a sound mind, that does not feed 
on empty words, looks upon this freedom of thought only as 
simply absurd, and, what is more, as sinful. 

You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless ; you 
feel safe because the Law will protect you. But do you 
imagine that this "Law" applies to your Catholic neigh- 
bors? Do you imagine that they are bound by the re- 
straints that bind you? Here is Pope Leo XHI, in his 
Encyclical of 1890 — and please remember that Leo XHI 
was the beau ideal of our capitalist statesmen and edi- 
tors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever 
roasted a heretic. He says : 

If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws 
of God — ^if they inflict injury upon the Church — or set at naught 



118 The Profits of Religion 

the authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in the Supreme 
Pontiff, then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to 
render obedience. 

And consider how many fields there are in which the 
laws of a democratic state do and forever must contra- 
vene the "laws of God" as interpreted by the Catholic 
Church. Consider for example, that the Pope, in his de- 
cree Ne Temere, has declared that all persons who have 
been married by civil authorities or by Protestant 
clergymen are living in "filthy concubinage" ! Consider, 
in the same way, the problems of education, burial, pris- 
on discipline, blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, 
mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy. To 
the above list, as given by Gladstone, one might add 
many issues, such as birth control, which have arisen 
since his time. 

What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is 
full of expressions of that intention, set forth in the 
boldest and haughtiest and most uncompromising man- 
ner. For example. Cardinal Manning, in the Pro-Cathe- 
dral at Kensington, speaking in the name of the Pope : 

I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; 
I claim more than this — I claim to be the supreme judge and 
director of the consciences of men — of the peasant that tills the 
field, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the house- 
hold of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for king- 
doms; I am the sole, last supreme judge of what is right and 
wrong. 

Temporal Power 

What this means is, that here in our American de- 
mocracy the Catholic Church is a rebel ; a prisoner of 
war who bides his time, watching for the moment to 
rise in revolt, and meantime making no secret of his 



The Profits of Religion 119 

intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true be- 
lievers in America, instructed them as to their attitude 
in captivity: 

The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and 
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, 
protected against violence by the common laws and the impar- 
tiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. 
Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw 
the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the 
most desirable status of the church, or that it would be uni- 
versally lawful or expedient for state and church to be, as in 
America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with 
you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous 
growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with 

which God has endowed His Church But she would bring forth 

more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the 
favor of the laws and patronage of the public authority. 

Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, ad- 
dressing his flock in the "Western Watchman", June 
27,1913: 

Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen 
afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between the 
church and the civil government we take the side of the church; 
of course we do. Why, if the government of the United States 
were at war with the church, we would say tomorrow. To hell 
with the government of the United States; and if the churdi 
and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say, 

To hell with all the governments of the world Why is it ttiat 

in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the popu- 
lation, the Catholic church is so much feared? She is loved by 
all her children and feared by everybody. Why is it that the Pope 
has such tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the 
world. AU the emperors, all the kings j all the princes, all the 
presidents of the world, are as tiwse altar boys of mine. The 
Pope is the ruler of the world. 

You recall what I said at the outset about Power; 



120 The Profits of Religion 

the ability to control the lives of other men, to give laws 
and moral codes, to shape fashions and tastes, to be re- 
vered and regarded. Here is a man swollen to bursting 
with this Power. Dressed in his holy robes, with his 
holy incense in his nostrils, and the faces of the faith- 
ful gazing up at him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim : 

The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the 
judge of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and duties 
of the state. 

And lest you think that an extreme example of 
ultramontanist arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", 
April 6, 1912, speaking for Cardinal O'Connell, whose 
official organ it is : 

It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley, 
O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and 
members of an American hierachy, yet they are as cardinals 
foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as one 
of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation to con- 
cede the same honors that they receive abroad. 

Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war, 
he would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors reserved 
for a foreign royal personage, and at any official entertainment 
at Washington the Cardinal will outrank not merely every cab- 
inet officer, the speaker of the house and the vice-president, 
but also the foreign ambassadors, coming immediately next to 
the chief magistrate himself. 

Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal person- 
age not of sovereign rank visits New York it is his duty to make 
the first call on Cardinal Farley. 

Knights of Slavery 

Such is the worldly station of these apostles of the 
lowly Jesus. And what is their attitude towards their 
brothers in Grod, the rank and file of the membership, 
whose pennies grease the wheels of the ecclesiastical 



The Profits of Religion 121 

machine ? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over a delegate 
to represent him in America, and at a convention of the 
Federation of Catholic Societies held in New Orleans in 
November, 1910, this gentleman, Diomede Falconio, de- 
livered himself on the subject of Capital and Labor. 
We have heard the slave-code of the Anglican disciples 
of Jesus, the revolutionary carpenter; now let us hear 
the slave-code of his Eoman disciples: 

Human society has its origin from God and is constituted 
of two classes of people, the rich and the poor, which respectively / 
represent Capital and Labor. 

Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God, 
human society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters 
and servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles and 
plebeians. 

And lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope 
sent a second representative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, 
speaking at a general meeting of the German Catholic 
Central- Verein, St. Louis, 1917, declared : 

One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European 
war is the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the Cath- 
olic Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines. We must 
be ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to work against 
it. As I understand, you have a society of wealthy people in St. 
Louis ready for such a campaign. You have experienced leaders 
who are masters in their kind of work. They are always insistent 
to show that this wealth was and is in close touch with the 
Church, and therefore it will not fail. 

This, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the 
present book, which therefore no doubt will be entitled 
to the 'Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor Theolog.", and the 
"Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus, Archiepiscopus 
Sti. Ludovici." No wonder that the "experienced lead- 
ers" of America, our captains of industry and exploiters 



122 The Profits of Religion 

of labor, are forced, whatever their own faith may be, 
to make use of this system of subjection. A few years 
ago we read in our papers how a Jewish millionaire of 
Baltimore was presenting a fortune to the Catholic 
Church, to be used in its war upon Socialism. The late 
Mark Hanna, the shrewdest and most far-seeing man 
that Big Business ever brought into power, said that 
in twenty years there would be two parties in America, 
a capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be the 
Catholic church that would save the country from 
Socialism. That prophecy was widely quoted, and sank 
into the souls of our steel and railway and money mag- 
nates ; from which time you might see, if you watched 
political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman 
Hierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you 
cannot get an expression of opinion hostile to Cathol- 
icism into any newspaper of importance. The Associat- 
ed Press does not handle news unfavorable to the 
Church, and from top to bottom, the politician takes off 
his hat when the Sacred Host goes by. Said Arch- 
bishop Quigley, speaking before the children of the 
Mary Sodality: 

I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against 
the chiHfch in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed. 

Priests and Police 

And bow is it in our national capital, the palladium 
of our liberties ? As a means of demonstrating the pow- 
er of the church and the subservience of our politicians, 
the Catholics have invented what they call the "Card- 
inal's Day Mass" : An elaborate procession of high ec- 
clesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and jewels, 
through the streets of Washington, accompanied by a 



The Phofits of Religion 123 

small army of policemen, paid by non-Catholic tax- 
payers. The Cardinal seats himself upon a throne, and 
our political rulers make obeisance before him. On 
Sunday, January 14, 1917, there were present at this 
political mass the following personages : Four cabinet 
members and their wives; the speaker of the House; a 
large group of senators and representatives ; a general 
of the army and his wife ; an admiral of the navy and 
his wife ; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and 
his wife, and another Justice of the Supreme Court and 
his wife. 

And understand that the church makes no secret of 
its purpose in conducting such public exhibitions. Here 
is the pious Pope Leo XIH again, in his Encyclical of 
Nov. 1, 1885: 

All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements 
in daily political life in the countries where they live. They must 
penetrate, wherever possible, in the administration of civil af- 
fairs; must constantly exert the utmost vigilance and energy to 
prevent the usages of liberty from going beyond the limits fixed 
by God's law. All Catholics should do all in their power to cause 
the constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the 
principles of the true Church. 

And following these instructions, the Catholics are 
organized for political work. There are the various 
Catholic Societies, such as the Knights of Columbus, 
secret, oath-bound organizations, the military arm of 
the Papd Power. These societies boast some three mil- 
lion members, and control not less than that many 
votes. The one thing that you can be certain about these 
votes is that on every public question, of whatever na- 
ture, they will be cast on the side of ignorance and re- 
action. Thus, it was the influence of the Catholic So- 



124 The Profits of Religion 

cieties which put upon our national statute books the 
infamous law providing five years imprisonment and 
five thousand dollars fine for the sending through the 
mail of information about the prevention of concep- 
tion. It is their influence which keeps upon the statute- 
books of New York state the infamous law which per- 
mits divorce only for infidelity, and makes it "collusion" 
if both parties desire the divorce. It is these societies 
which, in every city and town in America, are pushing 
and plotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so 
that the public may not have a chance to read scientific 
books; to get Catholics into the public schools and on 
school-boards, so that children may not hear about 
Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to have Catholics in control 
of police and on magistrates benches, so that priests 
who are caught in brothels may not be exposed or pun- 
ished. 

You are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, 
perhaps; but during a period of "vice raids" in New 
York I was told by a captain of police, himself a Cath- 
olic, that it was a common thing for them to get priests 
in their net. "Of course," the official added, good- 
naturedly, "we let them slip out." I understood that he 
had to do that ; for the Pope, in his "Motu Proprio" de- 
cree, has forbidden Catholics to bring a priest into court 
for any civil crime whatsoever ; he has forbidden Cath- 
olic policemen to arrest. Catholic judges to try, and 
Catholic law-makers to make laws affecting any priest 
of the Church of Rome. And of course we know, upon 
the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope is "the sole, 
last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." He 
has held that position for a thousand years and more ; 



The Profits of Religion 125 

and wherever you consult the police records throughout 
the thousand years, you find the same entries concern- 
ing Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn to Riley's "Illustra- 
tions of London Life from Original Documents," and I 
find in the year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose name is 
considerately suppressed, had a breviary stolen from 
him by a loose woman, because he has not given her any 
money, either on that night or the one previous. In 
1320 John de Sloghtre, a priest, is put in the tower "for 
being found wandering about the city against the 
peace", and Richard Heyring, a priest, is indicted in the 
ward of Farringdon and in the ward of Crepelgate "as 
being a bruiser and nightwalker." That this has been 
going on for six hundred years is due, not to any special 
corruption of the Catholic heart, but to the practice of 
clerical celibacy, which is contrary to nature, a trans- 
gression of fundamental instinct. It should be noted 
that the purpose of this transgression, which pretends 
to be spiritual, is really economic; it was the means 
whereby the church machine built up its power through 
the Middle Ages. The priests had children then, as they 
have them today; but these children not being recog- 
nized, the church machine remained the sole heir of the 
property of its clergy. 

The Church Militant 

Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it 
was possible for Germany to prepare through so many 
years for her assault on civilization, and for England 
to have slept through it all. In exactly the same way, 
the historian of a generation from now will marvel that 
America should have slept, while the New Inquisition 
was planning to strangle her. For we are told with the 



126 The Profits of Religion 

utmost explicitness precisely what is to be done. We 
are to see wiped out these gains of civilization for which 
our race has bled and agonized for many centuries ; the 
very gains are to serve as the means of their own de- 
struction ! Have we not heard Pope Leo tell his faithful 
how to take advantage of what they find in America — 
our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our 
open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met 
democracy? 

We see the army being organized and drilled under 
our eyes ; and we can read upon its banners its purpose 
proclaimed. Just as the Prussian military caste had its 
slogan "Deutschland ueber AUes!" so the Knights of 
Slavery have their slogan : "Make America Catholic !" 

Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested 
by the fact that none of their conventions ever fails in 
its resolutions to "deeply deplore the loss of the tem- 
poral power of Our Father, the Pope." Their subjec- 
tion to priestly domination is indicated by such resolu- 
tions as this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914 : 

The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention as- 
sembled, prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present filial 
regards with assurances of loyalty and obedience to the Holy 
See and request the Papal blessing. 

On June 10th, 1912, one T. J. Carey of Palestine, 
Texas, wrote to Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Del- 
egate: "Must I, as a Catholic, surrender my political 
freedom to the Church ? And by this I mean the right 
to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or Republican 
parties when and where I please?" The answer was: 
"You should submit to the decisions of the Church, even 
at the cost of sacrificing political principles." And to 



The Profits of Religion 127 

the same effect Mgr. Preston, in New York City, Jan. 1, 
1888 : "The man v.^ho says, *1 will take my faith from 
Peter, but I will not take my politics from Peter,' is not 
a true Catholic." 

Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes 
that it does not discover some new scheme to advance 
the Papal glory ; a "Catholic battle-ship" in the United 
States navy; Catholic chaplains on all ships of the 
navy; Catholic holidays — such as Columbus Day — to 
be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty 
million dollars worth of church property exempted 
from taxation in New York City ; mission bells to be set 
up at the expense of the state of California ; state sup- 
port for parish schools — or, if this cannot be had, ex- 
emption of Catholics from taxation for school pur- 
poses. So on through the list which might continue for 
pages. 

More than anything else, of course, the Papal ma- 
chine is concerned with education, or rather, with the 
preventing of education. It was in its childish days that 
the race fell under the spell of the Priestly Lie ; it is in 
his childish days that the individual can be most safely 
snared. Suffer little children to come unto the Catholic 
priest, and he will make upon their sensitive minds an 
impression which nothing in after life can eradicate. 
So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is the parish- 
school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school 
system. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the So- 
ciety of Jesus, in his book, "The Rights of Our Little 
Ones": 

Catholic parents cannot, in conscience, send their children to 



128 The Profits of Religion 

American public schools, except for very grave reasons approved 
by the ecclesiastical authorities. 

While state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited 
amount of knowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said 
to have a beneficial influence on civilization in general. 

The state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even 
in case of utter illiteracy, so long as the essential physical and 
moral education are sufficiently provided for. 

And so, at all times and in all places, the Catholic 
Church is fighting the public school. Eternal vigilance 
is necessary; as "America", the organ of the Jesuits, 
explains : 

Sometimes it is a new building code, or an attempt at taxing 
the school buildings, which creates hardships to the parochial 
and other private schools. Now it is the free text book law that 
puts a double burden on the Catholics. Then again it is the 
unwise extension of the compulsory school age that forces chil- 
dren to be in school until they are 16 to 18 years old. 

And if you wish to know the purpose of the Catholic 
schools, hear Archbishop Quigley of Chicago, speaking 
before the children of the Mary Sodality in the Holy 
Name Parish-School : • 

Within twenty years this country is going to rule the world. 
Kings and emperors will pass away, and the democracy of the 
United States will take their place. The West will dominate the 
country, and what I have seen of the Western parochial schools 
has proved that the generation which follows us will be ex- 
clusively Catholic. When the United States rules the world the 
Catholic Church will rule the world. 

The Church Triumphant 

The question may be asked. What of it? What if 
the Church were to rule ? There are not a few Ameri- 
cans who believe that there have to be rich and poor, 
and that rule by Roman Catholics might be preferable 



n 



The Profits of Religion 129 

to rule by Socialists. Before you decide, at least do not 
fail to consider what history has to tell about priestly 
government. We do not have to use our imaginations 
in the matter, for there was once a Golden Age such 
as Archbishop Quigley dreams of, when the power of 
the church was complete, when emperors and princes 
paid homage to her, and the civil authority made haste 
to carry out her commands. What was the condition of 
the people in those times ? We are told by Lea, in his 
"History of the Inquisition" that : 

The moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved. 
Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and its 
methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and sin was 
comparatively unimportant except as a source of revenue to 
those who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie tersely puts it, 
hell and purgatory would be emptied if enough money could be 
found. The artificial standard thus created is seen in a revela- 
tion of the Virgin to St. Birgitta, that a Pope who was free 
from heresy, no matter how polluted by sin and vice, is not so 
wicked but that he has the absolute power to bind and loose 
souls. There are many wicked popes plunged in hell, but all 
their lawful acts on earth are accepted and confirmed by God, 
and all priests who are not heretics administer true sacraments, 
no matter how depraved they may be. Correctness of belief was 
thus the sole essential; virtue was a wholly subordinate consider- 
ation. How completely under such a system religion and morals 
came to be dissociated is seen in the remarks of Pius II, that 
the Franciscans were excellent theologians, but cared nothing 
about virtue. 

This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of perse- 
cution embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were admitted 
to be patterns of virtue were ruthlessly exterminated in the 
name of Christ, while in the same holy name the orthodox could 
purchase absolution for the vilest of crimes for a few coins. 
When the only unpardonable offence was persistence in some 
trifling error of belief, such as the poverty of Christ; when men 



130 The Profits of Religion 

had before them the example of their spiritual guides as leaders 
in vice and debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the 
sanctions of morality were destroyed and the confusion between 
right and wrong became hopeless. The world has probably never 
seen a society more vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart fasci- 
nate us with their pictures of the artificial courtesies of chival- 
ry; the mystic reveries of Rysbroek and of Tauler show us that 
spiritual life survived in some rare souls, but the mass of the 
population was plunged into the depths of sensuality and the 
most brutal oblivion of the moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo 
tells us that the priesthood were accountable, and that, in com- 
parison with them, the laity were holy. What was that state of 
comparative holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he 
writes, for the benefit of confessors, giving a terrible sketch 
of universal immorality which nothing could purify but fire and 
brimstone from heaven. The chroniclers do not often pause in 
their narrations to dwell on the moral aspects of the times, but 
Meyer, in his annals of Flanders, under date of 1379, tells us 
that it would be impossible to describe the prevalence every- 
where of perjuries, blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, 
brawls, murder, rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, 
debauchery, avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, 
and similar vices, and he illustrates his statement with the fact 
that in the territory of Ghent, within the space of ten months, 
there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders com- 
mitted in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and 
other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans Peur led his 
Crusaders to destruction at Micopolis, their crimes and cynical 
debauchery scandalized even the Turks, and led to the stem re- 
buke of Bajazet himself, who as the monk of St. Denis admits 
was much better than his Christian foes. The same writer, 
moralizing over the disaster at Agincourt, attributes it to the 
general corruption of the nation. Sexual relations, he says, were 
an alternation of disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was 
nought but fraud and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church 
her tithes, and ordinary conversation was a succession of blas- 
phemies. The Church, set up by God as a model and protector 
of the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops, 



The Profits of Religion 131 

through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual 
accepters of persons; they annointed themselves with the last 
essence extracted from their flocks, and there was in them 
nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of decent. 

God in the Schools 

But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, 
let us take a modern country in which the Catholic 
Church has worked its will. Until recently, Spain was 
such a country. Now the people are turning against the 
clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael 
Shaw's "Spain From Within": 

On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church, 
interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life, ordering 
the conditions of employment, draining them of their hard-won 
livelihood by trusts and monopolies established and maintained in 
the interest of the Eeligious Orders, placing obstacles in the way 
of their children's education, hindering them in the exercise of 
their constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of 
them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly dictation. 
Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are instigated by 
the Jesuits. The country goes to war in Morocco; it is dragged 
into it solely in defense of the mines owned, actually, if not 
ostensibly, by the Jesuits. The consumos cannot be abolished 
because the Jesuits are financially interested in their continu- 
ance. 

We have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that 
"the state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, 
even in case of utter illiteracy." How has that doctrine 
worked out in Spain? There was an official investiga- 
tion of school conditions, the report appearing in the 
"Heraldo de Madrid" for November, 1909. In 1857 
there had been passed a law requiring a certain num- 
ber of schools in each of the 79 provinces: this re- 
quirement being below the very low standards prevail- 



i32 The Profits of Religion 

ing at that time in other European countries. Yet In 
1909 it was found that only four provinces had the re- 
quired number of elementary schools, and at the rate 
of increase then prevailing it would have taken 150 
years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the popula- 
tion were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and vil- 
lages had no government schools at all. The govern- 
ment owed nearly a million and a half dollars in unpaid 
salaries to the teachers. The private schools were near- 
ly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work 
and catechism; the punishments prevailing in them 
were "cruel and disgusting." 

As to the location of the schools, a report of the 
Minister of Education to the Cortes, the Parliament of 
Spain, sets forth as follows : 

More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many 
of these are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There 
are schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with 
slaughter houses, with stables. One school forms the entrance to 
a cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the master's table 
v/hile the last responses are being said. There is a school into 
which the children cannot enter until the animals have been sent 
out to pasture. Some are so small that as soon as the warm 
weather begins the boys faint for want of air and ventilation. 
One school is a manure-heap in process of fermentation, and one 
of the local authorities has said that in this way the children are 
warmer in winter. One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. 
Another, in Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls 
when there is a bull-fight in the town. 

These conditions excited the indignation of a Span- 
ish educator by the name of Francesco Ferrer. He 
founded what he called a "modern school", in which the 
pupils should be taught science and common sense. He 
drew, of course, the bitter hatred of the Catholic hier- 



The Profits of Religion 133 

archy, which saw in the spread of his principles the 
end of their mastery of the people. When the Barce- 
lona insurrection took place, they had Ferrer seized 
upon a charge of having been its instigator ; they had 
him tried in secret before a military tribunal, convicted 
upon forged documents, and shot beneath the walls of 
the fortress of Montjuich. The case was thoroughly in- 
vestigated by William Archer, one of England's leading 
critics, a man of scrupulous rectitude of mind. His con- 
clusion is that Ferrer was absolutely innocent of the 
charges against him, and that his execution was the 
result of a clerical plot. Of Ferrer's character Archer 
writes : 

Fragmentary though they be, the utterances which I have 
quoted form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last we 
see in him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible idealist. 
His ideals are narrow, and his devotion to them fanatical; but 
it is devoid, if not of egoism, at any rate of self-interest and 
self-seeking. As he shrank from applying the money entrusted 
him to ends of personal luxury, so also he shrank from making 
his ideas and convictions subserve any personal ambition or 
vanity. 

The Menace 

There are, of course, many people in America who 
will not rest idle while their country falls into the con- 
dition of Spain. There are anti-Catholic propaganda 
societies, which send out lecturers to discuss the Church 
and its records ; and this is exasperating to devout be- 
lievers, who regard the Church as holy, and any criti- 
cism of it as blasphemy. So we have opportunity to 
observe the working out of the doctrine that the Church 
is superior to the civil law. 

On June 12th, 1913, there came to the little town of 



134 The Profits of Religion 

Oelwein, Iowa, a former priest of the Catholic Church, 
named Jeremiah J. Crowley, to deliver a lecture expos- 
ing the Papal propaganda. The Catholics of the town 
made efforts to intimidate the owner of the place in 
which the lecture was to be given; the priest of the 
town. Father O'Connor, preached a sermon furiously 
denouncing the lecturer; and after the lecture the un- 
fortunate Crowley was surrounded by a mob of men, 
women and boys, and although he was six feet three in 
size, he was beaten almost to death. At the trial which 
followed it developed that Father O'Connor and also 
his brother, a judge on the Superior Bench, were ac- 
cessories before the fact. 

Nor is this a solitary instance. The Catholic mili- 
tary societies, with their uniforms and their armories, 
are not maintained for nothing. As Archbishop Quig- 
ley declared before the German Catholic Central Verein : 

We have well ordered and efficient organizations, all at the 
beck and nod of the hierarchy and ready to do what the church 
authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of loyal Catholics 
ready to step into the breach at any time and present an un- 
broken front to the enemy we may feel secure. 

And so, on the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group 
of Catholics entered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colo- 
rado, overpowered a police guard and seized the Rev. 
Otis L. Spurgeon, an anti-Catholic lecturer. They bound 
and gagged him, took him to a lonely woods, and beat 
him to insensibility. The same thing happened to the 
Rev. Augustus Barnett, at Buffalo; the Rev. William 
Black was killed at Marshall, Texas. In each case the 
assailants avowed themselves Knights of Columbus, 
and efforts to punish them failed, because no jury can 



The Profits of Religion 135 

be got to convict a Catholic, fighting for his Pope 
against a godless state. The most pious Leo XIII has 
laid down : 

It is an Impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for 
the purpose of obeying the magistrates, or to transgress the 
law of the Church under the pretext of observing the civil law. 

There are papers published to warn Americans 
against the plotting of this political Church. One of 
them, "The Menace," has a circulation of more than a 
million; and naturally the Knights of Slavery do not 
enjoy reading it. Year after year they have marshalled 
their power to have this paper barred from the mails — 
so far, in vain. They caused an obscenity prosecution, 
which failed; so finally the press rooms of the paper 
were blown up with dynamite. At the present time 
there is a "Catholic Truth Society" with a publication 
called "Truth", to oppose the anti-Catholic campaign; 
and that is all right, of course — except when the agents 
who collect the two-dollar subscriptions to this publica- 
tion make use of Untruth in their labors — ^promising 
absolution and salvation to the families, dead and liv- 
ing, of those who "come across" with subscriptions. In 
the "Bulletin of the American Federation of Catholic 
Societies" for September, 1915, I find a record of the 
ceaseless plotting to bar criticism of the Catholic 
Church from the mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany Cath- 
olic congressman, proposes a bill in Washington; and 
Judge St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the Fed- 
eration's "law committee", points out the difficultfes in 
the way of such legislation. You cannot pass a law 
against ridiculing religion, because the Catholics want 
to ridicule Christian Science, Mormonism, and the 



136 The Profits of Religion 

"Holy Ghost and Us" Society ! The Judge thinks the 
purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if 
they can slip into the present law the words "scurrilous 
and slanderous" ; he hopes that this much can be done 
without the American people catching on ! 

You read these things for the first time, perhaps, 
and you want to start an American "Kultur-kampf ." I 
make haste, therefore, to restate the main thesis of this 
book. It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy 
today ; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, 
but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a 
wolf makes use of sheep's clothing. 

You remember how, when Americans first awak- 
ened to the universal corruption of our politics, we used 
to attribute it to the "ignorant foreign vote." Turn to 
Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty" and you will see how 
reformers twenty years ago explained our political de- 
pravity. But we probed deeper, and discovered that the 
purely American communities, such as Rhode Island, 
were the most corrupt of all. It dawned upon us that 
wherever there was a political boss paying bribes on 
election day, there was a captain of industry furnishing 
the money for the bribes, and taking some public priv- 
ilege in return. So we came to realize that political cor- 
ruption is merely a by-product of Big Business. 

And when we come to probe this problem of the 
spread of Supersition in America, this amazing renas- 
cence of Romanism in a democracy, we find precisely 
the same phenomenon. It is not the poor foreigner who 
troubles us. Our human magic would win him — our 
easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of Hberty, our 
open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met 



The Profits of Religion 137 

democracy. We should break down the Catholic ma- 
chine, and not all the priests in the hierarchy could stop 
us — ^were it not for the Steel Trust and the Coal Trust 
and the Beef Trust, the Liquor Trust and the Traction 
Trust and the Money Trust — those masters of America 
who do not want citizens, free and intelligent and self- 
governing, but who want the slave-hordes as they come, 
ignorant, inert, physically, mentally and morally help- 
less! 

No, do not let yourself be lured into a Kultur-kampf . 
It is not the pennies of the servant-girls which build 
the towering cathedrals ; it is not the two-dollar contri- 
butions for the salvation of souls which support the 
Catholic Truth Society and the Knights of Columbus 
and the Holy Name Society and the Mary Sodality and 
the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and 
all the rest of the machinery of the Papal propaganda. 
These help, of course ; but the main sources of growth 
are, first, the subsidies of industrial exploiters, the ma- 
jority of whom are non-Catholic, and second, the priv- 
ilege of public plunder granted as payment for votes 
by politicians who are creatures and puppets of Big 
Business. 

King Coal 

The proof of these statements is written all over 
the industrial life of America. I will stop long enough 
to present an account of one industry, asking the read- 
er to accept my statement that if space permitted I 
could present the same sort of proof for a dozen other 
industries which I have studied — the steel-mills of 
Western Pennsylvania, the meat-factories of Chicago, 
the glass-works of Southern Jersey, the silk-mills of 



138 The Profits of Religion 

Paterson, the cotton-mills of North Carolina, the wool- 
en-mills of Massachusetts, the lumber-camps of Louisi- 
ana, the copper-mines of Michigan, the sweat-shops of 
New York. 

In a lonely part of the Rocky Mountains lies a group 
of enormously valuable coal-mines owned by the Rocke- 
fellers and other Protestant exploiters. The men who 
work these mines, some twelve or fifteen thousand in 
number, come from all the nations of Europe and Asia, 
and their fate is that of the average wage-slave. I do 
not ask anyone to take my word, but present sworn 
testimony, taken by the United States Commission on 
Industrial Relations in 1914. Here is the way the Ital- 
ian miners live, as described in a doctor's report : 

Houses up the canyon, so-called, of which eight are habitable, 
and forty-six simply awful; they are disreputably disgraceful. 
I have had to remove a mother in labor from one part of the 
shack to another to keep dry. 

And here is the testimony of the Rev. Eugene S. 
Gaddis, former superintendent of the Sociological De- 
partment of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company : 

The C. F. & I. Company now own and rent hovels, shacks 
and dug-outs that are unfit for the habitation of human beings 
and a^e little removed from the pig-sty make of dwellings. And 
the people in them live on the very level of a pig-sty. Frequent- 
ly the population is so congested that whole families are crowded 
into one room; eight persons in one small room was reported 
during the year. 

And here is what this same clergyman has to say 
about the bosses whom the Rockefellers employ : 

The camp superintendents as a whole impressed me as most 
uncouth, ignorant, immoral, and in many instances, the most 
brutal set of men that I have ever met. Blasphemous bullies. 



The Profits of Religion 139 

Sometimes the miner grows tired of being robbed of 
his weights, and applies for the protection which the 
law of the state allows him. What happens then? 

"When a man asked for a checkweighman, in the language 
of the super he was getting too smart." 
"And he got what?" 
"He got it In the neck, generally." 

And when these wage-slaves, goaded beyond en- 
durance, went on strike, in the words of the Commis- 
sion's report : 

Five strikers, one boy, and thirteen women and children in 
the strikers' tent colony were shot to death by militiamen and 
guards employed by the coal companies, or suffocated and burned 
to death when these militiamen and guards set fire to the tents 
in which they made their homes. 

And now, what is the position of education in such 
camps ? The Rev. James McDonald, a Methodist preach- 
er, testified that the school building was dilapidated 
and unfit. One year there were four teachers, the next 
three, and the next only two. The teacher of the pri- 
mary grade had a hundred and twenty children en- 
rolled, ninety per cent of whom could not speak a word 
of English. 

Every little bench was seated with two or three. It was over- 
crowded entirely, and she could hardly get walking room around 
there. 

And as to the political use made of this deliberately 
cultivated ignorance, former United States Senator 
Patterson testified that the companies controlled all 
elections and all nominations: 

Election returns from the two or three counties in which the 
large companies operate show that in the precincts in which the 



140 The Profits of Religion 

mining camps are located the returns are nearly unanimous in 
favor of the men or measures approved by the companies, re- 
gardless of party. 

And now comes the all-important question. What 
of the Catholic Church and these evils ? The majority 
of these mine-slaves are Catholics, it is this Church 
which is charged with their protection. There are 
priests in every town, and in nearly every camp. And 
do we find them lifting their voices in behalf of the 
miners, protesting against the starving and torturing 
of thirty or forty thousand human beings ? Do we find 
Catholic papers printing accounts of the Ludlow mas- 
sacre? Do we find Catholic journalists on the scene re- 
porting it, Catholic lawyers defending the strikers, 
Catholic novelists writing books about their troubles? 
We do not ! 

Through the long agony of the fourteen months 
strike, I know of just one Catholic priest. Father Le 
Fevre, who had a word to say for the strikers. One of 
the first stories I heard when I reached the strike-field 
was of a priest who had preached on the text that "Idle- 
ness is the root of all evil," and had been reported as a 
"scab" and made to shut up. "Who made him ?" I asked, 
naively, thinking of his church superiors. My inform- 
ant, a union miner, laughed. "We made him !" he said. 

I talked with another priest who was prudently sav- 
ing souls and could not be interested in questions of 
worldly greed. Max Eastman, reporting the strike in 
the "Masses", tells of an interview with a Catholic sis- 
ter. 

"Has the Church done anything to try to help these people, 
or to bring about peace?" we asked. "I consider it the most 
useless thing in the v/orld to attempt it," she replied. 



The Profits of Religion 141 

The investigating committee of Congress came to 
the scene, and several clergymen of the Protestant 
Church appeared and bore testimony to the outrages 
which were being committed against the strikers ; but 
of all the Catholic priests in the district not one ap- 
peared — not one! Several Protestant clergymen testi- 
fied that they had been driven from the coal-camps — 
not because they favored the unions, but because the 
companies objected to having their workers educated at 
all ; but no one ever heard of the Catholic Church hav- 
ing trouble with the operators. To make sure on this 
point I wrote to a former clergyman of Trinidad who 
watched the whole strike, and is now a first lieutenant 
in the First New Mexico Infantrs^ He answered: 

The Catholic Church seemed to get along with the companies 
very cordially. The Church was permitted in all the camps. The 
impression was abroad that this was due to favoritism. I honor 
what good the Church does, but I know of no instance, during 
the Colorado coal-strike or at any other time or place, when 
the Catholic Church has taken any special interest in the cause of 
the laboring men. Many Catholics, especially the men, quit the 
church during the coal-strike. 

The Unholy Alliance 

Everywhere throughout America today the ulti- 
mate source of all power, political, social, and religious, 
is economic exploitation. To all other powers and all 
other organizations it speaks in these words: "Help 
us, and you will thrive ; oppose us, and you will be de- 
stroyed." It has spoken to the Catholic Church, for 
sixteen hundred years the friend and servant of every 
ruling class ; and the Church has hastened to fit itself 
into the situation, continuing its pastoral role as shep- 
herd to the wage-slave vote. 



142 The Profits of Religion 

In New York and Boston and Chicago the Church 
is "Democratic" ; so in the Blaine campaign it was pos- 
sible for a Republican clergyman to describe the issue 
as "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." But the Holy Of- 
fice was shrewd and socially ambitious, and the Grand 
Old Party was desperately in need of votes, so under 
the regimi of Mark Hanna, the President-Maker, there 
began a rapprochement between Big Business and the 
New Inquisition. Under Hanna the Catholic Church 
got representation in the Cabinet ; under him the Card- 
inal's Mass became a government institution, a Cath- 
olic College came to the fore in Washington, and Cath- 
olic prelates were introduced in the role of eminent pub- 
licists, their reactionary opinions on important ques- 
tions being quoted with grave solemnity by a prosti- 
tute press. It was Mark Hanna himself who founded 
the National Civic Federation, upon whose executive 
committee Catholic cardinals and archbishops might 
work hand in glove with Catholic labor-leaders for the 
chloroforming of the American working-class. Hanna's 
biographer naively calls attention to the President- 
maker's popularity among Catholics, high and low, and 
the support they gave him. "Archbishop Ireland was 
in frequent correspondence with him, and used his in- 
fluence in Mr. Hanna's behalf." 

And this tradition, begun under Hanna, was con- 
tinued under Roosevelt, and reached its finest flower in 
the days of Taft, the most pliant tool of the forces of 
evil who has occupied the White House since the days 
of the Slave Power. President Taft was himself a Uni- 
tarian; yet it was under his administration that the 
Catholic Church achieved one of its dearest ambitions, 



II 



The Profits of Religion 143 

and broke into the Supreme Court. Why not ? We can 
imagine the powers of the time in conference. It is de- 
sired to pack the Court against the possibility of prog- 
ress ; it is desired to find men who will stand like a rock 
against change — and who better than those who have 
been trained from childhood in the idea of a divine 
sanction for doctrine and morals ? After all, what is it 
that Hereditary Privilege wants in America ? A Roman 
Catholic code of property rights, with a supreme trib- 
unal to play the part of an infallible Pope ! 

Under this Taft administration the country was 
governed by the strangest legislative alliance our his- 
tory ever saw; a combination of the Old Guard of the 
Republican Party with the leaders of the Tammany 
Democracy of New York. "Bloody shirt" Foraker, sen- 
ator from Ohio, voting with the sons of those Irish 
Catholic mob-leaders whom the Federal troops shot 
down in the draft-riots ! By this unholy combination a 
pledge to reduce the tariff was carried out by a bill 
which greatly increased its burdens ; by this combina- 
tion the public lands and resources of the country were 
fed to a gang of vultures by a thievish Secretary of 
the Interior. And of course under such an administra- 
tion the cause of "Religion" made tremendous strides. 
Catholic officials were appointed to public office. Cath- 
olic ecclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Cath- 
olic favor became a means to political advancement. 
You might see a hard-swearing old political pirate like 
"Uncle Joe" Cannon, taking his cigar out of the corner 
of his blasphemous mouth and betaking himself to the 
"Cardinal's Day Mass", to bend his stiff knees and bow 
his hoary unrepentant head before a jeweled prelate on 



144 The Profits of Religion 

a throne. You might see an emissary of the United 
States government proceeding to Rome, prostrating 
himself before the Pope, and paying over seven million 
dollars of our taxes for lands which the filthy and sens- 
ual friars of the Philippine Islands had filched from the 
wretched serfs of that country and which the 
wretched serfs had won back by their blood in a revolu- 
tion. 

Secret Service 

This Taft administration, urged on by the Catholic 
intrigue, made the most determined efforts to prevent 
the spread of radical thought. Because the popular 
magazines were opposing the plundering of the country, 
a bill was introduced into Congress to put them out of 
business by a prohibitive postal tax; the President 
himself devoted all his power to forcing the passage of 
this bill. At the same time the Socialist press was 
handicapped by every sort of persecution. I was at 
that time in intimate touch with the "Appeal to Rea- 
son", and I know that scarcely a month passed that the 
Post Office Department did not invent some new "reg- 
ulation" especially designed to limit its circulation. I 
recall one occasion when I met the editor on his way 
to Washington with a trunkf ul of letters from subscrib- 
ers who complained that their postmasters refused to 
deliver the paper to them ; and later on this same editor 
was prosecuted by a Catholic Attorney General and 
sentenced to prison for seeking to awaken the people 
concerning the Moyer-Haywood case. 

From my personal knowledge I can say that under 
the administration of President Taft the Roman Cath- 
olic Church and the Secret Service of the Federal Gov- 



The Profits of Religion 145 

ernment worked hand in hand for the undermining of 
the radical movement in America. Catholic lecturers 
toured the country, pouring into the ears of the public 
vile slanders about the private morality of Socialists; 
while at the same time government detectives, paid 
out of public funds, spent their time seeking evidence 
for these Catholic lecturers to use. I know one man, a 
radical labor-leader, whose morals happened to ap- 
proach those of the average capitalist politician, and 
who was prevented by threats of exposure and scandal 
from accepting the Socialist nomination for President. 
I know a dozen others who were shadowed and spied 
upon ; I know one case — myself — a man who was asking 
a divorce from his wife, and whose mail was opened 
for months. 

This subject is one on which I naturally speak with 
extreme reluctance. I will only say that my opponent 
in the suit made no charge of misconduct against me ; 
but those in control of our political police evidently 
thought it likely that a man who was not living with 
his wife might have something to hide ; so for months 
my every move was watched and all my mail inter- 
cepted. In such a case one might at first suspect one's 
private opponent ; but it soon became evident that this 
net was cast too wide for any private agency. Not 
merely was my own mail opened, but the mail of all 
my relatives and friends — people residing in places as 
far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland 
smile of a government official to whom I complained 
about this matter: "If you have nothing to hide you 
have nothing to fear." My answer was that a study of 
many labor cases had taught me the methods of the 

10 



146 The Profits of Religion 

agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real evi- 
dence if he can find it ; but if not, he has familiarized 
himself with the affairs of his victim, and can make 
evidence which will be convincing when exploited by 
the yellow press. In my own case, the matter was not 
brought to a test, for I went abroad to live; when I 
made my next attack on Big Business, the Taft admin- 
istration had been repudiated at the polls, and the 
Secret Service of the government was no longer at the 
disposal of the Catholic machine. 

Tax Exemption 

Today the Catholic Church is firmly established and 
everywhere recognized as one of the main piliars of 
American capitalism. It has some fifteen thousand 
churches, fourteen million communicants, and prop- 
erty valued at half a billion dollars. Upon this property 
it pays no taxes, municipal, state or national; which 
means, quite obviously, that you and I, who do not go 
to church, but who do pay taxes, furnish the public 
costs of Catholicism. We pay to have streets paved 
and lighted and cleaned in front of Catholic churches ; 
we pay to have thieves kept away from them, fires put 
out in them, records preserved for them — all the serv- 
ices of civilization given to them gratis, and this in a 
land whose constitution provides that Congress (which 
includes all state and municipal legislative bodies) 
"shall make no law respecting a religious establish- 
ment." When war is declared, and our sons are drafted 
to defend the country, all Catholic monks and friars, 
priests and dignitaries are exempted. They are "min- 
isters of religion" ; whereas we Socialists may not even 



The Profits of Religion 147 

have the status of "conscientious objectors." We do 
not teach "religion" ; we only teach justice and human- 
ity, decency and truth. 

In defense of this tax-exemption graft, the stock 
answer is that the property is being used for purposes 
of "education" or "charity". It is a school, in which 
children are being taught that "liberty of conscience is 
a most pestiferous error, from which arises revolution, 
corruption, contempt of sacred things, holy institutions, 
and laws." (Pius IX). It is a "House of Refuge", to 
which wayward girls are committed by Catholic magis- 
trates, and in which they are worked twelve hours a 
day in a laundry or a clothing sweat-shop. Or it is a 
"parish-house", in which a celibate priest lives under 
the care of an attractive young "house-keeper". Or it 
is a nunnery, in which young girls are held against 
their will and fed upon the scraps from their sisters' 
plates to teach them humility, and taught to lie before 
the altar, prostrate in the form of a cross, while their 
"Superiors" walk upon their bodies to impress the re- 
ligious virtues. "I was a teacher in the Catholic schools 
up to a very recent period," writes the woman friend 
who tells me of these customs, "and I know about the 
whole awful system which endeavors to throttle every 
genuine impulse of the human will." 

Concerning a large part of this church property, 
the claim of "religious" use has not even the shadow of 
justification. In every large city of America you will 
find acres of land owned by the Catholic machine, and 
supposed to be the future site of some institution ; but 
as time goes on and property values increase, the 
church decides to build on a cheaper site, and proceeds 



148 The Profits of Religion 

to cash in the profits of its investment, precisely as 
does any other real estate speculator. Everywhere you 
turn in the history of Romanism you find it at this 
same game, doing business under the cloak of philan- 
thropy and in the holy name of Christ. Read the letter 
which the Catholic Bishop of Mexico sent to the Pope 
in 1647, complaining of the Jesuit fathers and their 
boundless graft. In McCabe's "Candid History of the 
Jesuits" appears a summary: 

A remarkable account is given of the worldly property of 
the fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of the wealth 
of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep, besides 
cattle and other property. They own six large sugar refineries, 
worth from half a million to a million crowns each, and mak- 
ing an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all the other 
monks and clergy of Mexico together own only three small re- 
fineries. They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops 
and butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually in- 
trigue for legacies — a woman has recently left them 70,000 
crowns — and they refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. 
It is piquant to add to this authoritative description that the 
Jesuit congregation at Rome were still periodically forbidding 
the fathers to engage in commerce, and Jesuit writers still 
gravely maintain that the society never engaged in commerce. 
It should be added that the missionaries were still heavily subsi- 
dized by the King of Spain, that there were (the Bishop says) 
only five or six Jesuits to each of their establishments, and that 
they conducted only ten colleges. 

"Holy History" 

And if you think this tax-exemption privilege 
should be taken away from the church grafters, let me 
suggest a course of procedure. Write a letter about it 
to your daily newspaper; and if the letter is not pub- 
lished, go and see the editor and ask why ; so you will 



The Profits of Rkligion 149 

learn something about the partnership between Super- 
sition and Big Business ! 

It is not too much to say that today no daily news- 
paper in any large American city dares to attack the 
emoluments of the Catholic Church, or to advocate re- 
strictions upon the ecclesiastical machine. As I write, 
they are making a new Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, 
and all the newspapers of that graft-ridden city herald 
it as an important social event. Each paper has the 
picture of the new prelate, with his shepherd's crook 
upraised, his empty face crowned with a rhomboidal 
fooFs cap, and enough upholstery on him to outfit a 
grand opera company. The Los Angeles "Examiner", 
the only paper in the city with a pretense to radicalism, 
turns loose its star- writer — one of those journalist 
virtuosos who will describe you a Wild West "rodeo" 
one day, and a society elopement the next, and a G. 0. 
P. convention the next ; and always with his picture, one 
inch square, at the head of his effusion. He takes in 
the Catholic festivity ; and does it phaze him ? It does 
not ! He is a newspaper man, and if his city editor sent 
him to hell, he would take the assignment and write 
like the devil. To read him now you might think he 
had been reared in a convent ; his soul is uplifted, and 
he bursts forth in pure spontaneous ecstacy: 

Solemnly magnificent, every brilliant detail symbolically 
picturing the holy history of the Roman Catholic Church in the 
inexorable progress of its immense structure, which rises from 
the rock of Peter, with its beacons of faith and devotion pierc- 
ing the fog of doubt and fear which surround the world and the 
worldly, was the ceremony yesterday at the Cathedral of St. 
Vibiana, whereby Bishop John J. Cantwell was installed in his 
diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles. 



150 The Profits of Religion 

And then, a month later, comes another occasion of 
state — the i'wenty-third Annur. Banquet - the Mer- 
chants' and Manufacturers' Association of Los Angeles. 
I should have to write a little essay to make clear the 
sociological significance ot that function; explaining 
first, a nation-wide organization which has been proven 
by congressional investigation and by the publication of 
its secret documents to be a machine for the corruption 
of our political life; and then exhibiting our "City of 
the Angels", from which all Angels have long since fled ; 
a city in the first crude stage of land speculation, with- 
out order, dignity or charm ; a city of real estate agents, 
who exist by selling climate to new arrivals from the 
East ; a city whose intellectual life is "boosting", whose 
standards of truth are those of the horse-trade. Its 
newspapers publish a table of temperatures, showing 
the daily contrast between Southern California and the 
East. This device is effective in the winter-time; but 
last June, when for five days and nights the tempera- 
ture was over 110, and several times 114 — ^the Los An- 
geles space was left empty ! 

In the same way, there is a rule that our earth- 
quake shocks are never mentioned, unless they destroy 
whole towns. On the afternoon of Jan. 26th, 1918, a 
cyclone hit Pasadena, of violence sufficient to lift a barn 
over a church-steeple and deposit it in the pastor's 
front yard. That evening a friend of mine in Los An- 
geles called up the office of the "Times" to make in- 
quiry ; and although they are only thirteen miles away, 
and have a branch office and a special correspondent in 
Pasadena, the answer was that they had heard nothing 
about the cyclone ! And next morning I made a careful 



The Profits of Religion 151 

search of their columns. On the front page I read: 
"Fourth BHzzard of Season Raging in East"; also: 
"Another Earthquake in Guatemala". But not a line 
about the Pasadena cyclone That there was plenty of 
space in that issue, you may judge from the fact that 
there were twenty headlines like the following — ^many 
of them representing full page and halt page illustrated 
"write-ups" : 

Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The 
Bright Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California: Southland's 
Arms Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the East; Flower 
Stands Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate Big Manu- 
facturing Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los Angeles' 
Beautiful Homes; Nymphs Knit and Bathe at Ocean's Sunny 
Beach; etc. 

Now we are in the War and our business is booming, 
we are making money hand over fist. It is all the more 
dehghtf ul, because we are putting our souls into it, we 
are lending our money to the government and saving 
the world for Democracy! Our labor unionists have 
been driven to other cities, and our Mexican agitators 
and I. W. W.'s are in jail; so, in the gilt ball-room of 
our palatial six-dollar-a-day hotel the four hundred 
masters of our prosperity meet to pat themselves on the 
back, and they invite the new Catholic bishop to come 
and confer the grace of God upon their eating. 

The Bishop comes ; and I take up the "Times" — ^the 
labor-hating, labor-baiting, fire-and-slaughter-breath- 
ing "Times" — and here is the episcopal picture on the 
front page, the arms stretched four columns wide in 
oratorical beneficence. How the shepherd of Jesus does 
love the Merchants and Manufacturers! How his elo- 
quence is poured out upon them ! "You represent, gent- 



152 The Profits of Religion 

lemen, the largest and the most civilizing secular body 
in the country. You are the pioneers of American civ- 
ilization I am glad to be among you ; glad that my 

lines have fallen in this glorious land by the sunset sea, 
and honored to meet in intimate acquaintance the big 
men who have raised here in a few years a city of met- 
ropolitan proportions." 

And then, bearing in mind his responsibilities as 
guardian of Exploitation, the Bishop goes on to tell 
them about the coming class-war. "On the one side a 
statesman preaching patience and respect for vested 
rights, strict observance of public faith; on the other 
a demagog speaking about the tyranny of capitalists 
and usurers." And then, of course, the inevitable re- 
ligious tag: "How will men obey you, if they believe 
not in God, who is the author of all authority?" At 
which, according to the "Times", "prolonged applause 
and cheers" from the Merchants and Manufacturers! 
The editor of the "Times'* goes back to his office, and 
inspired by this episcopal eloquence writes a "leader" 
with the statement that: "We have no proletariat in 
America!'* 

Das Centrum 

In order to see clearly the ultimate purpose of this 
Unholy Alliance, this union of Superstitition and the 
Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, we have to 
go to Europe, where the arrangement has been working 
for a thousand years. In Europe to-day we see the whole 
world in conflict with a band of criminals who have been 
able to master the minds and lives of a hundred million 
highly civilized people. As I write, the Junker aristocracy 
is at bay, and soon to have its throat cut ; but there comes 



The Profits of Religion 153 

a Holy Father to its rescue, with the cross of Jesus up- 
lifted, and a series of pleas for mercy, written in Vienna, 
edited in Berlin, and sent out from Rome. The Holy 
Father loves all mankind with a tender and touching 
love ; his heart bleeds at the sight of bloodshed and suf- 
fering, and he pleads the sacred cause of peace on earth 
and good-will toward men. 

But what was the Holy Father doing through the 
forty-three years that the Potsdam gang were preparing 
for thd'r assault on the world? How was the Holy 
Father manifesting his love of peace and good will? He 
is, you understand, the "sole, last, supreme judge of what 
is right and wrong," and his followers obey him with the 
utmost promptness and devotion — they express them- 
selves as "prostrate at his feet." And when the masters 
of Prussia came to him and said : "Give us the power to 
turn this nation into the world's greatest military em- 
pire" — ^what did the Roman Church answer? Did it speak 
boldly for the gentle Jesus, and the cause of peace on 
earth anld good- will towards men? No, it did not. To 
Bismarck in Germany it said, precisely as it said to Mark 
Hanna in America: "Give us honors and prestige; give 
us power over the minds of the young, so that we may 
plunder the poor and build our cathedrals and feed fat 
our greed ; and in return wie will furnish you with votes, 
so that you may rule the state and do what you wMl." 

You think there is exaggeration in that statement? 
Why, we know the very names of the prelates with whom 
the master-cynic of the Junkerthum made his "deal." He 
had tried the method of the Kultur-kampf , and had failed r 
but before he repealed the anti-Catholic laws, he made 
sure that the Church had learned its lesson, and would 



154 The Profits of Religion 

nevermore oppose the Prussian ruling caste. We know 
how this bargain was carried out ; we have the record of 
the Centrum, the Catholic party of Germany, whose hun- 
dred deputies were the solid rock upon which the mili- 
tary regime of Prussia was erected. Not a battle-ship 
nor a Zeppelin was built for which the Black Terror did 
not vote the funds; not a school-child was beaten in 
Posen or Alsace that the New Inquisition did not shout 
its "Hoch !" The writer sat in the visitors* gallery of the 
Reichstag when the Socialists were protesting against 
the torturing of miserable Herreros in Africa, and he 
heard the deputies of the Holy Father*s political party 
screaming their rage like jaguars in a jungle night. All 
over Europe the Catholic Church organized fake labor 
unions, the "yellows," as they were called, to scab upon 
the workers and undermine the revolutionary movement. 
The Holy Father himself issued precise instructions for 
the management of these agencies of betrayal. Hear the 
most pious and benevolent Leo XHI : 

"They must pay special and principal attention to 
piety and morality, and their internal discipline must be 
directed precisely by these considerations; otherwise 
they entirely lose their special character, and come to be 
very little better than those societies which take no 
account of Religion at all." 

It IS so hard, you see, to keep a man thinking about 
piety and[ morality while he is starving! I am quoting 
from the Encyclical Letter on "The Condition of Labor," 
issued in 1891, and addressed "to our Venerable Brethren, 
all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of the 
Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the Apos- 



The Profits of Religion 155 

tolic See." The purpose of the letter is "to refute false 
teaching," and the substance of its message is: 

This great labor question cannot be solved except by assum- 
ing as a principle that private property must be held sacred and 
inviolable. 

And again, the purpose of churches proclaimed in 
language as frank as any used in the present book : 

The chief thing to be secured is the safe-guarding, by legal 
enactment and policy, of private property. Most of all it is 
essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude 
within the line of duty; for if all may justly strive to benefit 
their condition, yet neither justice nor the common good al- 
lows any one to seize that which belongs to another, or, under 
the pretext of futile and ridiculous equality, to lay hands on 
other peoples* fortunes. 

And this, you understand, in lands where rapine and 
conquest, class-tyranny and priestly domination have 
bieien the custom since the dawn of history ; in which no 
property-right can possibly trace back to any other basis 
than force. In Austria, for example — Austria, the leader 
and guardian of the Holy Alliance — Austria, which had 
no Reformation, no Revolution, no Kultur-kampf — Aus- 
tria, in which the income of the Catholic Primate is 
$625,000 a year ! In other words, Austria is still to a large 
extent a "Priestly Empire;" and it was Austria which 
began the war — began it in a religious quarrel, with a 
Slav people which does not acknowledge the Holy 
Father as the ruler of the world, but persists in adhering 
to the Eastern Church. So of course to-day, when Aus- 
tria is learning the bitter lesson that they who draw the 
sword shall perish by the sword, the heart of the Holy 
Father is wrung with grief, and he sends out these elo- 
quent peacie-notes, written in Vienna and edited in Ber- 



156 The Peofits of Religion 

lin. And at the same time his private chaplain is con- 
victed and sentenced to prison for life as Austria's Mas- 
ter-Spy in Rome ! 

It is a curious thing to observe — the natural instinct 
which, all over the world, draws Superstition and Exploi- 
tation together. This war, which is hailed as a war 
against autocracy, might almost as accurately be de- 
scribed as a war against the clerical system. Wherever 
in the world you find the Papal power strong, there you 
find sympathy with the Prussian infamy and there you 
find German intrigue. In Spain, for example ; in Ireland 
and Quebec, and in the Argentine. The treatment of 
Belgium was a little too raw — too many priests were 
shot at the outset, and so Cardinal Mercier denounces the 
Germans ; but you notice that he pleads in vain with the 
Vatican, which stands firm by its beloved Austria, and 
against the godless kingdom of Italy. The Kaiser al- 
lows the hope of restoration of the temporal power at 
the peace settlement ; and meantime the law forbidding 
the presence of the Jesuits in Germany has been repealed, 
and all over the world the propagandists of this order are 
working for the Kaiser. Sir Roger Casement was raised 
a Catholic, and so also "Jim" Larkin, the Irish labor- 
lieader who is touring America denouncing the Allies. 
The Catholic Bishop of Melbourne opposed and beat con- 
scription in Australia , and it was Catholic propaganda of 
treachery among the ignorant peasant-soldiers from 
Sicily which caused the breaking of the Italian line at 
Tolmino. So deeply has this instinct worked that, in the 
fall of 1917 while the Socialist party in New York was 
campaigning for immediate peace, the Catholic Irish sud- 
denly forgot their ancient horrors. The Catholic "Free- 



The Profits of Religion 157 

man's Journal" published nine articles favoring Socialism 
in a single issue; while even "The Tablet," the diocesan 
paper, began to discover that the Socialists were not such 
bad fellows after all. The same "Tablet" which a feiw 
years ago allowed Father Belford to declare that Social- 
ists were mad dogs who should be "stopped with a 
bullet"! 

Note to second edition : Since the above was written, the war 
fervor has swept America, including even the rank and file of 
the Catholics, and what has here been said might seem unfair to 
persons who have forgotten the attitude of the Church during 
the early part of the conflict, and the struggle it cost to bring 
the hierarchy into line. It is one of the ironies of history that 
the most reactionary organization in the world should be lending 
its aid to the destruction of the second most reactionary. When 
the Catholic Church marches forth to war for Democracy, it is 
not drawing America down into the pit, but is letting America 
pull it out of the pit — at least for a time, and the spectacle is 
one in which all lovers of progress will rejoice. 



I 



BOOK FOUR 

The Church of the Slavers 



See, underneath the Crown of Thorn, 
The eye-balls fierce, the features grim! 

And merrily from night to morn 
We chaunt his praise and worship him — 

Great Christus-Jingo, at whose feet 

Christian and Jew and Atheist meet ! 

A wondrous god! most fit for those 

Who cheat on 'Change, then creep to prayer ; 

Blood on his heavenly altar flows, 
Heirs burning incense fills the air. 

And Death attests in street and lane 

The hideous glory of his reign. 

— ^Buchanan 



159 



I 



The Profits of Religion 161 

Face of Caesar 

The thesis of this book is the effect of fixed dogma in 
producing mental paralysis, and the use of this mental 
paralysis by Economic Exploitation. From that stand- 
point the various Protestant sects are better than the 
Catholic, but not much better. The Catholics stand upon 
Tradition, the Protestants upon an Inspired Word; but 
since this Word is the entire literary product, history 
and biography, science and legislation, poetry, drama and 
fiction of a whole people for something like a thousand 
years, it is possible by judicious selection of texts to 
prove anything you wish to prove and to justify anything 
you wish to do. The "Holy Book" being full of poly- 
gamy, slavery, rape and wholesale murder, committed by 
priests and rulers under the direct orders of God, it was 
a very simple matter for the Protestant Slavers to con- 
struct a Bible defense of their system. 

They get poor Jesus because he was given to irony, 
that most dangerous form of utterance. If he could come 
back to life, and see what men have done with his little 
joke about the face of Caesar on the Roman coin, I think 
he would drop dead. As for Paul, he was a Roman bure- 
aucrat, with no nonsense in his make-up; when he or- 
dered, "Servants obey your masters," he meant exactly 
what he said. The Roman official stamp which he put 
upon the gospel of Jesus has been the salvation of the 
Slavers from the Reformation on. 

In the time of Martin Luther, the peasants of Ger- 
many were suffering the most atrocious and awful mis- 
ery ; Luther himself knew about it, he had denounced the 
princely robbers and the priestly land-exploiters with 

that picturesque violence of which he was a master. But 
11 



162 The Profits of Religion 

nothing had been done about it, nothing ever is done 
about it — until at last the miserable peasants attempted 
to organize and win their own rights. Their demands do 
not seem to us so very criminal as we read them today; 
the privilege of electing their own pastors, the abolition 
of villeinage, the right to hunt and fish and cut wood in 
the forest, the reduction of exorbitant rents, extra pay- 
ment for extra labor, and — that universal cry of peasant 
communes whether in Russia, England, Mexico or six- 
teenth century Germany — the restoration to the village 
of lands taken by fraud. But Luther would hear nothing 
of slaves asserting their own rights, and took refuge in 
the Pauline sociology: If they really wished to follow 
Christ, they would drop the sword and resort to prayer; 
the gospel has to do with spiritual, not temporal, affairs ; 
earthly society cannot exist without inequalities, etc. 

And when the peasants went on in spite of this, he 
turned upon them and denounced them to the princes; 
he issued proclamations which might have been the in- 
structions of Mr. John Wanamaker to the police-force of 
his "City of Brotherly Love": "One cannot answer a 
rebel with reason, but the best answer is to hit him with 
the fist until blood flows from the nose." He issued a 
letter: "Against the Murderous and Thiieving Mob of 
Peasants," which might have come from the Reverend 
Woelfkin, Fifth Avenue Pastor of Standard Oil: "The 
ass needs to be beaten, and the populace needs to be con- 
trolled with a strong hand. God knew this well, and 
therefore he gave the rulers, not a fox's tail, but a sword." 
He implored these rulers, after the fashion of Methodist 
Chancellor Day of the University of Syracuse : "Do not 
be troubled about the severity of their repression, for it 



The Profits of Religion 163 

will save many souls." With such pious exhortations in 
their ears the princes set to work, and slaughtered a hun- 
dred thousand of the miserable wretches ; they completely 
aborted the social hopes of the Reformation, and cast 
humanity into the pit of wage-slavery and militarism for 
four centuries. As a church scholar, Prof. Rauschen- 
busch, puts it : 

The glorious years of the Lutheran Reformation were from 
1517 to 1525, when the whole nation was in commotion, and a 
great revolutionary tidal wave seemed to be sweeping every 
class and every higher interest one step nearer to its ideal of 
life The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly re- 
ligious and creative when it embraced the whole of human life 
and enlisted the enthusiasm of all ideal men and movements. 
When it became "religious" in the narrow sense, it grew schol- 
astic and spiny, quarrelsome, and impotent to awaken high en- 
thusiasm and noble life. 

Deutschland ueber AUes 

As a result of Luther's treason to humanity, his 
church becamie the state church of Prussia, and Bible- 
worship and Devil-terror played their part, along with 
the Mass and the Confessional, in building up the Junker 
dream. A court official — the Oberhofprediger — was set 
up, and from that time on the Hohenzollerns were the 
most pious criminals in Europe. Frederick the Great, the 
ancestral genius, was an atheist and a scoffer, but he be- 
liieved devoutly in religion for his subjects. He said: "If 
my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain 
in the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of auto- 
crats, tells with jocular approval how he kept them from 
thinking : 

He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal o^ 
pains with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them; and 



164 The Profits of Religion 

for the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his Sergeants 
and Corporals. Indeed, the reverend men feel themselves to be 
a body of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals, and Captains, to whom 
obedience is the rule, and discontent a thing not to be indulged 
in by any means. 

So the soldiers stayed in the ranks, and Frederick 
raided Silesia and Poland. His successors ordered all 
the Protestant sects into one, so that they might be 
more easily controlled; from which time the Lutheran 
Church has been a department of the Prussian state, in 
some cases a branch of the municipal authority. 

In 1848, when the people of various German states 
demanded their liberty, it was an ultra-pious king of 
Prussia who sent his troops and shot them down — pre- 
cisely as Luther had advised to shoot down the peas- 
ants. At this time the future maker of the German Em- 
pire rose in the Landtag and made his bow before the 
world ; a young Prussian land-magnate, Otto von Bis- 
marck by name, he shook his fist in the face of the new 
German liberalism, and incidentally of the new German 
infidelity : 

Christianity is the solid basis of Prussia; and no state 
erected upon any other foundation can permanently exist. 

The present Hohenzollern has diligently maintained 
this tradition of his line. It was his custom to tour the 
Empire in a train of blue and white cars, carrying as 
many costumes as any stage favorite, most of them mil- 
itary ; with him on the train went the Prussian god, and 
there was scarcely a performance at which this god did 
not appear, also in military costume. After the failure 
of the **Kultur-kampf," the official Lutheran religion 
was ordered to make friends with its ancient enemy, 
the Catholic Church. Said the Kaiser : 



The Profits of Religion 165 

I make no difference between the adherents of the Catholic 
and Protestant creeds. Let them both stand upon the founda- 
tion of Christianity, and they are both bound to be true citizens 
and obedient subjects. Then the German people will be the 
rock of granite upon which our Lord God can build and com- 
plete his work of Kultur in the world. 

And here is the oath required of the Catholic clergy, 
upon their admission to equality of trustworthiness 
with their Protestant confreres : 

I will be submissive, faithful and obedient to his Royal 
Majesty, — and his lawful successors in the government, — as my 
most gracious King and Sovereign; promote his welfare accord- 
ing to my ability; prevent injury and detriment to him; and 
particularly endeavor carefully to cultivate in the minds of the 
people under my care a sense of reverence and fidelity towards 
the King, love for the Fatherland, obedience to the laws, and all 
those virtues which in a Christian denote a good citizen; and I 
will not suffer any man to teach or act in a contrary spirit. In 
particular I vow that I will not support any society or associa- 
tion, either at home or abroad, which might endanger the public 
security, and will inform His Majesty of any proposal made, 
either in my diocese or elsewhere, which might prove injurious 
to the State. 

And later on this heaven-guided ruler conceived the 
scheme of a Berlin-Bagdad railway, for which he needed 
one religion more ; he paid a visit to Constantinople, and 
made another debut and produced another god — with 
the result that millions of Turks are fighting under the 
belief that the Kaiser is a convert to the faith of Mo- 
hammed ! 

Der Tag. 

All this was, of course, in preparation for the great 
event to which all good Germans looked forward — to 
which all German officers drank their toasts at ban- 
quets — the Day. 



166 The Profits of Religion 

This glorious day came, and the field-gray armies 
marched forth, and the Pauline-Lutheran God marched 
with them. The Kaiser, as usual, acted as spokesman: 

Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. 
On me, the German emperor, the spirit of God has descended. 
I am His sword. His weapon and His viceregent. Woe to the 
disobedient and death to cowards and unbelievers. 

As to thie Prussian state religion, its attitude to 
the war is set forth in a little book written by a high 
clerical personage, the Herr Consistorialrat Dietrich 
Vorwerk, containing prayers and hymns for the soldiers, 
and for the congregations at home. Here is an appeal 
to the Lord God of Battles: 

Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily 
death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful 
long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its mark. 
Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath be too 
tame in carrying out Thy divine judgment. Deliver us and our 
ally from the Infernal Enemy and his servants on earth. Thine 
is the kingdom, the German land; may we, by the aid of Thy 
steel-clad hand, achieve the fame and the glory. 

It is this Herr Consistorialrat who has perpetrated the 
great masterpiece of humor of the war — the hymn in 
which he appieals to that God who keeps guard over 
Cherubim, Seraphim, and Zeppelins. You have to say 
over the German form of these words in order to get the 
effect of their delicious melody — "Cherubinen, Seraphi- 
nen, Zeppelinen!" And lest you think that this too- 
musical clergyman is a rata avis, turn to the little book 
which has been published in English under the same title 
as Herr Vorwerk's "Hurrah and Hallelujah." Here is 
the Rieverend S. Lehmann: 

Germany is the center of God's plans for the world. Ger- 



The Profits of Religion 167 

many's fight against the whole world is in reality the battle of 
the spirit against the whole world's infamy, falsehood and 
devilish cunning. 

And here is Pastor K. Koenig: 

It was God's will that we should will the war. 

And Pastor J. Rump : 

Our defeat would mean the defeat of His Son in humanity. 
We fight for the cause of Jesus within mankind. 

And here is an eminent theological professor : 

The deepest and most thought-inspiring result of the war is 
the German God. Not the national God such as the lower na- 
tions worship, but "our God," who is not ashamed of belonging 
to us, the peculiar acquirement of our heart. 

King Cotton 

It is a cheap way to gain applause in these days, to 
denounce the Prussian system; my only purpose is to 
show that Bible-worship, precisely as saint-worship or 
totem-worship, delivers the worshipper up to the Slav- 
ers. This truth has held in America, precisely as in 
Prussia. During the middle of the last century there 
was fought out a mighty issue in our free republic; 
and what was the part played in this struggle by the 
Bible-cults ? Hear the testimony of William Lloyd Gar- 
rison : "American Christianity is the main .pillar of 
American slavery." Hear Parker Pillsbury: "We had 
almost to abolish the Church before we could reach the 
dreadful institution at all." 

In the year 1818 the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly, which represented the churches of the South 
as well as of the North, passed by a unanimous vote a 
resolution to the effect that "Slavery is utterly incon- 
sistent with the law of God, which requires us to love 



168 The Profits of Religion 

our neighbor as ourselves." But in a generation the 
views of the entire South, including the Presbyterian 
Church, had changed entirely. What was the reason? 
Had the "law of God" been altered? Had some new 
"revelation" been handed down ? Nothing of the kind ; 
it was merely that a Yankee by the name of Eli Whit- 
ney had perfected a machine to take the seeds out of 
short staple cotton. The cotton crop of the South in- 
creased from four thousand bales in 1791 to four hun- 
dred and fifty thousand in 1820 and five million, four 
hundred thousand in 1860. 

There was a new monarch, King Cotton, and his 
empire depended upon slaves. According to the custom 
of monarchs since the dawn of history, he hired the 
ministers of God to teach that what he wanted was 
right and holy. From one end of the South to the other 
the pulpits rang with the text : "Cursed be Canaan ; a 
servant to servants shall he be to his brethren." The 
learned Bishop Hopkins, in his "Bible View of Slavery", 
gave the standard interpretation of this text : 

The Almighty, forseeing the total degredation of the Negro 
race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the descendants 
of Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged it to be their 
fittest condition. 

I might fill the balance of this volume with cita- 
tions from defenses of the "peculiar institution" in the 
name of Jesus Christ — and not only from the South, 
but from the North. For it must be understood that 
leading families of Massachusetts and New York owed 
their power to Slavery ; their fathers had brought mo- 
lasses from New Orleans and made it into rum, and 
taken it to the coast of Africa to be exchanged for 



The Profits of Religion 169 

slaves for the Southern planters. And after this trade 
was outlawed, the slave-grown cotton had still to be 
shipped to the North and spun; so the traders of the 
North must have divine sanction for the Fugitive Slave 
law. Here is the Bishop of Vermont declaring: "The 
slavery of the negro race appears to me to be fully- 
authorized both in the Old and New Testaments.'' 
Here in the "True Presbyterian", of New York, giving 
the decision of a clerical man of the world : "There is 
no debasement in it. It might have existed in Paradise, 
and it may continue through the Millenium." 

And when the slave-holding oligarchy of the South 
rose in arms against those who presumed to interfere 
with this divine institution, the men of God of the 
South called down blessings upon their armies in words 
which, with the proper change of names, might have 
been spoken in Berlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr. Thorn- 
well, one of the leading Presbyterian divines of the 
South: "The triumph of Lincoln's principles is the 

death-knell of slavery Let us crush the serpent in 

the egg.'* And the Keverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston : 
"The war is a war against slavery, and is therefore 
treasonable rebellion against the Word, Providence and 
Government of God." I read in the papers, as I am 
writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering 
against President Wilson's declaration that that coun- 
try must become democratic. Here is a manifesto of 
the German Evangelical League, made public on the 
four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation : 

We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from 
America, that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions, and 
that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of God on 
earth. 



170 The Profits of Religion 

In exactly the same way the rehgious bodies of the 
entire South united in an address to Christians through- 
out the world, early in the year 1863 : 

The recent proclamation of the President of the United 
States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South, is 
in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of the 
people of God. 

Witches and Women 

To whatever part of the world you travel, to what- 
ever page of history you turn, you find the endowed and 
established clergy using the word of God in defense of 
whatever form of slave-driving may then be popular 
and profitable. Two or three hundred years ago it was 
the custom of Protestant divines in England and Amer- 
ica to burn poor old women as witches ; only a hundred 
and fifty years ago we find John Wesley, founder of 
Methodism, declaring that "the giving up of witch- 
craft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." And if 
you investigate this witch-burning, you will find that it 
is only one aspect of a blot upon civilization, the Chris- 
tian Mysogyny. You see, there were two Hebrew 
legends — one that woman was made out of a man's 
rib, and the other that she ate an apple ; therefore in 
modern England a wife must be content with a legal 
status lower than a domestic servant. 

Perhaps the most comical of the clerical claims is 
this — that Christianity has promoted chivalry and re- 
spect for womanhood. In ancient Greece and Rome the 
woman was the equal and helpmate of man; we read 
in Tacitus about the splendid women of the Germans, 
who took part in public councils, and even fought in 
battles. Two thousand years before the Christian era 



The Profits of Religion 171 

we are told by Maspero that the Egyptian woman was 
the mistress of her house; she could inherit equally 
with her brothers, and had full control of her property. 
We are told by Paturet that she was "juridically the 
equal of man, having the same rights and being treated 
in the same fashion." But in present-day England, un- 
der the common law, woman can hold no office of trust 
or power, and her husband has the sole custody of her 
person, and of her children while minors. He can steal 
her children, rob her of her clothing, and beat her with 
a stick provided it is no thicker than his thumb. While 
I was in London the highest court handed down a de- 
cision on the law which does not permit a woman to 
divorce her husband for infidelity, unless it has been 
accompanied by cruelty; a man had brought his mist- 
ress into his home and compelled his wife to work for 
and wait upon her, and the decision was that this was 
not cruelty in the meaning of the law ! 

And if you say that this enslavement of Woman has 
nothing to do with religion — ^that ancient Hebrew 
fables do not control modern English customs — then 
listen to the Vicar of Crantock, preaching at St. Cran- 
tock's, London, Aug. 27th, 1905, and explaining why 
women must cover their heads in church : 

(1) Man*s priority of creation. Adam was first formed, 
then Eve. 

(2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, 
but the woman of the man. 

(3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for 
the woman, but the woman for the man. 

(4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory 
of God, but woman is the glory of man. 

(5) Woman's priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; 
but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression. 



172 The Profits of Religion 

(6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to 
Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands. 

(7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every 
man is Christ, but the head of the woman is man. 

I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justi- 
fied by these ancient texts; and there is nowhere in 
Christendom a clergy which cannot be persuaded to cite 
them at the demand of ruling classes. In the city where 
I write, three clergymen are being sent to jail for six 
months for protesting against the use of the name of 
Jesus in the wholesale slaughter of men. Now, I am 
backing this war. I know that it has to be fought, and 
I want to see it fought as hard as possible ; but I want 
to leave Jesus out of it, for I know that Jesus did not 
believe in war, and never could have been brought to 
support a war. I object to clerical cant on the subject; 
and I note that an eminent theological authority, "Billy" 
Sunday, appears to agree with me ; for I find him on the 
front page of my morning paper, assailing the three 
pacifist clergymen, and making his appeal not to 
Jesus, but to the blood-thirsty tribal diety of the an- 
cient Hebrews: 

I suppose they think they know more than God Almighty, 
who commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the bat- 
tle for the Lord; more than the God who made Samson strong 
so he could slay thousands of his nation's enemies in a right- 
eous cause. 

Right you are, Billy ! And if the capitalist system 
continues to develop unchecked, we shall some day see 
it dawn upon the masters of the world how wasteful it 
is to permit the superannuated workers to perish by 
slow starvation. So much more sensible to make use of 
them ! So we shall have a Bible defense of cannibalism ; 



The Profits or Religion 173 

we shall hear our evangelists quoting Leviticus : 'They 
shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters." 
Or perhaps some of our leisure-class ladies might make 
the discovery that the flesh of working-class babies is 
relished by pomeranians and poodles. If so, the Billy 
Sundays of the twenty-first century may discover the 
text : "Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy 
little ones against the stones." 

Moth and Rust 

It is especially interesting to notice what happens 
when the Bible texts work against the interests of the 
Slavers and their clerical retainers. Then they are null 
and void — and no matter how precise and explicit and 
unmistakable they may be ! Take for example the Sab- 
bath injunction: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all 
that thou hast to do." Karl Marx records of the pious 
England of his time that 

Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned 
to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in his 
front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of con- 
tract if he remains away from his metal, paper or glass works 
on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The ortho- 
dox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it oc- 
curs in the process of expanding capital. 

Or consider the attitude of the Church in the mat- 
ter of usury. Throughout ancient Hebrew history the 
money-lender was an outcast; both the law and the 
prophets denounced him without mercy, and it was 
made perfectly clear that what v^^as meant was, not the 
taking of high interest, but the taking of any interest 
whatsoever. The early church fathers were explicit, 
and the Catholic Church for a thousand years con- 



174 The Profits of Religion 

signed money-lenders unhesitatingly to hell. But then 
came the modern commercial system, and the money- 
lenders became the masters of the world ! There is no 
more amusing illustration of the perversion of human 
thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape 
from the dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides 
had trapped them. 

Here, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish 
Jesuit of the eighteenth century, a doctor of the 
Church, now worshipped as St. Alphonsus, presenting a 
long and elaborate theory of "mental usury" ; conclud- 
ing that, if the borrower pay interest of his own free 
will, the lender may keep it. In answer to the question 
whether the lender may keep what the borrower pays, 
not out of gratitude, but out of fear that otherwise 
loans will be refused to him in future, Ligouri says that 
"to be usury, it must be paid by reason of a contract, 
or as justly due; payment by reason of such a fear 
does not cause interest to be paid as an actual price." 
Again the great saint and doctor tells us that "it is not 
usury to exact something in return for the danger and 
expense of regaining the principal !" Could the house of 
J. P. Morgan and Company ask more of their ecclesi- 
astical department? 

The reader may think that such sophistications are 
now out of date; but he will find precisely the same 
knavery in the efforts of present-day Slavers to fit 
Jesus Christ into the system of competitive commer- 
cialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a carpen- 
ter's son, a thoroughly class-conscious proletarian. He 
denounced the exploiters of his own time with ferocious 
bitterness, he drove the money-changers out of the 



The Profits of Religion 175 

temple with whips, and he finally died the death of a 
common criminal. If he had forseen the whole modern 
cycle of capitalism and wage-slavery, he could hardly 
have been more precise in his exortations to his follow- 
ers to stand apart from it. But did all this avail him? 
Not in the least ! 

I place upon the witness-stand an exponent of Bible- 
Christianity whom all readers of our newspapers know 
well : a scholar of learning, a publicist of renown ; once 
pastor of the most famous church in Brooklyn ; now ed- 
itor of our most influential religious weekly; a liberal 
both in theology and politics ; a modernist, an advocate 
of what he calls industrial democracy. His name is Ly- 
man Abbott, and he is writing under his own signature 
in his own magazine, his subject being "The Ethical 
Teachings of Jesus". Several times I have tried to per- 
suade people that the words I am about to quote were 
actually written and published by this eminent doctor 
of divinity, and people have almost refused to believe 
me. Therefore I specify that the article may be found 
in the "Outlook", the bound volumes of which are in all 
large libraries: volume 94, page 576. The words are 
as follows, the bold face being Dr. Abbott's, not mine : 

My radical friend declares that the teachings of Jesus are 
not practicable, that we cannot carry them out in life, and that 
we do not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, said, *Lay not 
up for yourself treasures upon earth;' and Christians do uni- 
versally lay up for themselves treasures upon earth; every man 
that owns a house and lot, or a share of stock in a corporation, 
or a life insurance policy, or money in a savings bank, has laid 
up for himself treasure upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay 
not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, "Lay not 
up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth 
corrupt and where thieves break through and steal." And no 



176 The Profits of Religion 

sensible American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rocke*. 
feller's oil wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and thieves do 
not often break through and steal a railway or an insurance 
company or a savings bank. What Jesus condemned was hoard- 
ing wealth. 

Strange as it may sound to some of the readers of 
this book, I count myself among the followers of Jesus 
of Nazareth. His example has meant more to me than 
that of any other man, and all the experiences of my 
revolutionary life have brought me nearer to him. Liv- 
ing in the great Metropolis of Mammon, I have felt the 
power of Privilege, its scourge upon my back, its crown 
of thorns upon my head. When I read that article in 
the "Outlook", I felt just as Jesus himself would have 
felt ; and I sat down and wrote a letter — 

To Lyman Abbott 

This discovery of a new method of interpreting the 
Bible is one of such very great interest and importance 
that I cannot forbear to ask space to comment upon 
it. May I suggest that Dr. Abbott elaborate this ex- 
ceedingly fruitful !ea, and write us another article 
upon the extent to which the teachings of the Inspired 
Word are modified by modern conditions, by the prog- 
ress of invention and the scientific arts ? The point of 
view which Dr. Abbott takes is one which had never 
occurred to me before, and I had therefore been com- 
pletely mistaken as to the attitude of Jesus on the ques- 
tion. Also I have, like Dr. Abbott, many radical friends 
who are still laboring under error. 

Jesus goes on to bid his hearers: "Consider the 
lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither 
do they spin." What an apt simile is this for the "great 



The Profits of Religion 177 

mass of American wealth," in Dr. Abbott's portrayal of 
it! "It is serving the community," he tells us; "it is 
building a railway to open a new country to settlement 
by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry 
grain from the harvests of the West to the unfed mil- 
lions of the East," etc. Incidentally, it is piling up divi- 
dends for its pious owners ; and so everybody is happy 
— and Jesus, if he should come back to earth, could 
never know that he had left the abodes of bliss above. 

Truly, there should be a new school of Bible inter- 
pretation founded upon this brilliant idea. Jesus says, 
"Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound 
a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the syna- 
gogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of 
men." Verily not ; for of what avail are trumpets, com- 
pared with the millions of copies of newspapers which 
daily go forth to tell of Mr. Rockefeller's benefactions ? 
How transitory are they, compared with the graven 
marble or granite which Mr. Carnegie sets upon the 
front of each of his libraries ! 

There is the paragraph, "Neither shalt thou swear 
by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair 
white or black." I have several among my friends who 
are Quakers ; presumably Dr. Abbott has also ; and he 
should not fail to point out to them the changes which 
scientific discovery has wrought in the significance of 
this command against swearing. We can now make 
our hair either white or black, or a combination of 
both. We can make it a brilliant peroxide golden; we 
could, if pushed to an extreme, make it purple or green. 
So we are clearly entitled to swear all we please by our 
head. 

12 



178 The Profits of Religion 

Nor should we forget to examine other portions of 
the Bible according to this method. "Look not upon the 
wine when it is red,'* vv^e are told. Thanks to the activi- 
ties of that Capitalism which Dr. Abbott praises so 
eloquently, we now make our beverages in the chemical 
laboratory, and their color is a matter of choice. Also, 
it should be pointed out that we have a number of 
pleasant drinks which are not wine at all — "high-balls" 
and "gin rickeys" and "peppered punches"; also ver- 
mouthe and creme de menthe and absinthe, which I be- 
lieve, are green in hue, and therefore entirely safe. 

Then there are the Ten Commandments. "Thou 
shalt not make unto thee any graven image." See how 
completely our understanding of this command is 
changed, so soon as we realize that we are free to make 
images of molten metal! And that we may with im- 
punity bow down to them and worship them and serve 
them — even, for instance, a Golden Calf ! 

"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy 
God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy 
son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maid- 
servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within 
thy gates." This, again, it will be noted, is open to new 
interpretations. It specifies maidservants, but does not 
prevent one's employing as many married women as he 
pleases. It also says nothing about the various kinds of 
labor-saving machinery which we have now taught to 
work for us — sail-boats, naptha launches, yachts, auto- 
mobiles, and private cars — all of which may be busily 
occupied during the seventh day of the week. The men 
who run these machines — the guides, boatmen, stokers, 
pilots, chauffeurs, and engineers — would all indignant- 



The Profits of JIeligion 179 

ly resent being regarded as *^*servants", and so they do 
not come under the prohibition any more than the ma- 
chines. 

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, 
nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any- 
thing that is thy neighbor's." I read this paragraph 
over for the first time in quite a while, and I came with 
a jolt to its last words. I had been intending to point 
out that it said nothing about a neighbor's automobile, 
nor a neighbor's oil wells, sugar trusts, insurance com- 
panies and savings banks. The last words, however, 
stop one ofi abruptly. One is almost tempted to imagine 
that the Divine intelligence must have foreseen Dr. Ab- 
bott's ingenious method of interpretation, and taken this 
precaution against him. And this was a great surprise 
to me — ^for, truly, I had not supposed it possible that 
such an interpretation could have been foreseen, even by 
Omniscierice itself. I will conclude this communication 
by venturing the assertion that it could not have been 
foreseen by any other person or thing, in the heavens 
above, on the earth beneath, or the waters under the 
earth. Dr. Abbott may accept my congratulations upon 
having achieved the most ingenious and masterful ex- 
hibition of casuistical legerdemain that it has ever been 
my fortune to encounter in my readings in the litera- 
tures of some thirty centuries and seven different lan- 
guages. 

And I will also add that 1 respectfully challenge Dr. 
Abbott to publish this letter. And I announce to him in 
advance that if he refuses to publish it, I will cause it 
to be published upon the first page of the "Appeal to 



180 The Profits of Religion 

Reason", where it will be read by some five hundred 
thousand Socialists, and by them set before several mil- 
lion followers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and 
greatest revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has 
traduced and betrayed by the most amazing piece of 
theological knavery that it has ever been my fortune to 
encounter. 

The Octopus 

Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his 
editorial comment thereon he said that he did not know 
which of two biblical injunctions to follow: "Answer 
not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be thought 
like unto him" ; or "Answer a fool according to his folly, 
lest he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by pointing 
out a third text which the Reverend Doctor had pos- 
sibly overlooked : "He that calleth his neighbor a fool 
shall be in danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend Doc- 
tor took refuge in his dignity, and I bided my time and 
waited for that revenge which comes sooner or later to 
us muck-rakers. In this case it came speedily. The 
story is such a perfect illustration of the functions of 
religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask the 
reader's permission to recite it at length. 

For a couple of decades the political and financial 
life of New England has been dominated by a gigantic 
aggregation of capital, the New York, New Haven and 
Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan" concern; its pop- 
ular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the rail- 
roads of six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and 
steamship-lines, and a group of the most powerful 
banks of Boston and New York. It is controlled by a 
little group of insiders, who followed the custom of rail- 



The Profits of Religion 181 

road-wrecking familiar to students of American indus- 
trial life : buying' up new lines, capitalizing them at 
fabulous sums, and unloading them on the investing 
public ; paying dividends out of capital, "passing" divi- 
dends as a means of stock manipulation, accumulating 
surpluses and cutting "melons" for the insiders, while 
at the same time crushing labor unions, squeezing 
wages, and perjtnitting rolling-stock and equipment to 
go to wreck. 

All these facts were perfectly well known in Wall 
Street, and could not have escaped the knowledge of 
any magazine editor dealing with current events. In 
eight years the "New Haven" had increased its cap- 
italization 1501 per cent; and what that meant, any 
office boy in "the Street" could have told. What atti- 
tude should a magazine editor take to the matter? 

At that time there were still two or three free mag- 
azines in America. One of them was Hampton's, and 
the story of its wrecking by the New Haven criminals 
will some day serve in school text-books as the classic 
illustration of that financial piracy which brought on 
the American social revolution. Ben Hampton had 
bought the old derelict "Broadway Magazine", with 
twelve thousand subscribers, and in four years, by the 
simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up 
for it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he 
would have had a million; but in May, 1911, he an- 
nounced a series of articles dealing with the New Hav- 
en management. 

The articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, 
were so exact that they read today like the reports of 
the Interstate Commerce Commission, dated three 



182 The Profits of Religion 

years later. A representative of the New Haven called 
upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the first 
article — obtained from the printer by bribery — and was 
invited to specify the statements to which he took ex- 
ception ; in the presence of witnesses he went over the 
article line by line, and specified two minor errors, 
which were at once corrected. At the end of the con- 
ference he announced that if the articles were published, 
Hampton's Magazine would be "on the rocks in ninety 
days." 

Which threat was carried out to the letter. First 
came a campaign among the advertisers of the maga- 
zine, which lost an income of thousands of dollars a 
month, almost over night. And then came a campaign 
among the banks — the magazine could not get credit. 
Anyone familiar with the publishing business will un- 
derstand that a magazine which is growing rapidly has 
to have advances to meet each month's business. 
Hampton undertook to raise the money by selling 
stock ; whereupon a spy was introduced into his office 
as bookkeeper, his list of subscribers was stolen, and 
a campaign was begun to destroy their confidence. 

It happened that I was in Hampton's office in the 
summer of 1911, when the crisis came. Money had to 
be had to pay for a huge new edition ; and upon a prop- 
erty worth two millions of dollars, with endorsements 
worth as much again, it was impossible to borrow thirty 
thousand dollars in the city of New York. Bankers, 
personal friends of the publisher, stated quite openly 
that word had gone out that any one who loaned money 
to him would be "broken". I myself sent telegrams to 
everyone I knew who might by any chance be able to 



The Profits of Religion 183 

help; but there was no help, and Hampton retired 
without a dollar to his name, and the magazine was sold 
under the hammer to a concern which immediately- 
wrecked it and discontinued publication. 

The Industrial Shelley 

Such was the fate of an editor who opposed the 
"New Haven". And now, what of those editors who 
supported it ? Turn to "The Outlook, a Weekly Journal 
of Current Events," edited by Lyman Abbott — ^the 
issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and nine years 
after Christ came down to bring peace on earth and 
good-will toward Wall Street. You will there find an 
article by Sylvester Baxter entitled "The Upbuilding of 
a Great Railroad." It is the familiar "slush" article 
which we professional writers learn to know at a glance. 
"Prodigious". Mr. Baxter tells us, has been the progress 
of the New Haven ; this was "a masterstroke", that was 
"characteristically sagacious". The road had made 
"prodigious expenditures", and to a noble end : "Trans- 
portation efficiency epitomizes the broad aim that ani- 
mated these expenditures and other constructive ac- 
tivities." There are photographs of bridges and sta- 
tions — "vast terminal improvements", "a masterpiece 
of modern engineering", "the highest, greatest and 
most architectural of bridges". Of the official under 
whom these miracles were being wrought — President 
Mellen — ^we read: "Nervously organized, of delicate 
sensibility, impulsive in utterance, yet with an extra- 
ordinarily convincing power for vividly logical presen- 
tation." An industrial Shelley, or a Milton, you per- 
ceive ; and all this prodigious genius poured out for the 
general welfare! "To study out the sort of transpor- 



184 The Profits of Religion 

tation service best adapted to these ends, and then to 
provide it in the most efficient form possible, that is the 
Hfe-task that President Mellen has set himself." 

There was no less than sixteen pages of these rap- 
tures — quite a section of a small magazine like the 
"Outlook". "The New Haven ramifies to every spot 
where industry flourishes, where business thrives." 
"As a purveyor of transportation it supplies the public 
with just the sort desired." "Here we have the new 
efficiency in a nutshell." In short, here we have what 
Dr. Lyman Abbott means when he glorifies "the great 
mass of American wealth". "It is serving the commun- 
ity; it is building a railway to open a new country to 
settlement by the homeless ; it is operating a railway to 
carry grain from the harvests of the West to the unfed 
millions of the East," etc. The unfed millions — ^my 
typewriter started to write "underfed millions" — are 
humbly grateful for these services, and hasten to buy 
copies of the pious weekly which tells about them. 

The "Outlook" runs a column of "current events" 
in which it tells what is happening in the world; and 
sometimes it is compelled to tell of happenings against 
the interests of "the great mass of American wealth". 
The cynical reader will find amusement in following its 
narrative of the affairs of the New Haven during the 
five years tjubsequent to the publication of the Baxter 
article. 

First came the collapse of the road's service; a 
series of accidents so frightful that they roused even 
clergymen and chambers of commerce to protest. A 
number of the "Outlook's" subscribers are New Haven 
"commuters", and the magazine could not fail to refer 



The Profits of Religion 185 

to their troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three 
years and ten days after the Baxter rhapsody, we 
read : 

The most numerous accidents on a single road since the last 
fiscal year have been, we believe, those on the New Haven. In 
the opinion of the Connecticut Commission, the Westport wreck 
would not have occurred if the railway company had followed 
the recommendation of the Chief Inspector of Safety Appliances 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission in its report on a sim- 
ilar accident at Bridgeport a year ago. 

And by June 28th, matters had gone farther yet ; we 
find the "Outlook" reporting: 

Within a few hours of the collision at Stamford, the wrecked 
Pullman car was taken away and burned. Is this criminal de- 
struction of evidence ? 

This collapse of the railroad service started a clamor 
for investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion, which of course brought terror to the bosoms of 
the plunderers. On Dec. 20, 1913, we find the "Outlook" 
"putting the soft pedal" on the public indignation. "It 
must not be forgotten that such a road as the New 
Haven is, in fact if not in terms, a National possession, 
and as it goes down or up, public interests go down or 
up with it." But in spite of all pious admonitions, the 
Interstate Commerce Commission yielded to the public 
clamor, and an investigation was made — ^revealing such 
conditions of rottenness as to shock even the clerical re- 
tainers of Privilege. "Securities were inflated, debt was 
heaped upon debt", reports the horrified "Outlook" ; 
and when its hero, Mr. Mellen — its industrial Shelley, 
"nervously organized, of delicate sensibility" — admitted 
that he had no authority as to the finances of the road 
and no understanding of them, but had taken all his 



186 The Profits of Religion 

orders from Morgan, the "Outlook" remarks, deeply- 
wounded: "A pitiable position for the president of a 
great railway to assume." A little later, when things 
got hotter yet, we read : 

In the search for truth the Commissioners had to overcome 
many obstacles, such as the burning of books, letters and docu- 
ments, and the obstinacy of witnesses, who declined to testify 
until criminal proceedings were begun. The New Haven system 
has more than three hundred subsidiary corporations in a web 
of entangling alliances, many of which were seemingly planned, 
created and manipulated by lawyers expressly retained for the 
purpose of concealment or deception. 

But do you imagine even that would sicken the 
pious jackals of their offal? If so, you do not know 
the sturdiness of the pious stomach. A compromise 
was patched up between the government and the 
thieves who were too big to be prosecuted ; this bargain 
was not kept by the thieves, and President Wilson de- 
clared in a public statement that the New Haven ad- 
ministration had "broken an agreement deliberately 
and solemnly entered into," in a manner to the Presi- 
dent "inexplicable and entirely without justification." 
Which, of course, seemed to the "Outlook" dreadfully 
impolite language to be used concerning a "National 
possession"; it hastened to rebuke President Wilson, 
whose statement was "too severe and drastic." 

A new compromise was made between the govern- 
ment and the thieves who were too big to be prosecuted, 
and the stealing went on. Now, as I work over this 
book, the President takes the railroads for war use, 
and reads to Congress a message proposing that the 
securities based upon the New Haven swindles, togeth- 
er with all the mass of other railroad swindles, shall 



The Profits of Religion 187 

be sanctified and secured by dividends paid out of the 
public purse. New Haven securities take a big jump; 
and the "Outlook'', needless to say, is enthusiastic for 
the President's policy. Here is a chance for the big 
thieves to baptize themselves — or shall we say to have 
the water in their stocks made "holy" ? Says our pious 
editor, for the government to take property without 
full compensation "would be contrary to the whole 
spirit of America." 

The Outlook for Graft 

Anyone familiar with the magazine world will un- 
derstand that such crooked work as this, continued 
over a long period, is not done for nothing. Any maga- 
zine writer would know, the instant he saw the Baxter 
article, that Baxter was paid by the New Haven, and 
that the "Outlook" also was paid by the New Haven. 
Generally he has no way of proving such facts, and has 
to sit in silence ; but when his board bill falls due and 
his landlady is persistent, he experiences a direct and 
earnest hatred of the crooks of journalism who thrive 
at his expense. If he is a Socialist, he looks forward to 
the day when he may sit on a Publications' Graft Com- 
mission, with access to all magazine books which have 
not yet been burned ! 

In the case of the New Haven, we know a part of 
the price — thanks to the labors of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission. Needless to say, you will not find 
the facts recorded in the columns of the Outlook; you 
might have read it line by line from the palmy days of 
Mellen to our own, and you would have got no hint 
of what the Commission revealed about magazine and 



188 The Profits of Religion" 

newspaper graft. Nor would you have got much more 
from the great metropolitan dailies, which systematic- 
ally "played down" the expose, omitting all the really 
damaging details. You would have to go to the reports 
of the Commission — or to the files of "Pearson's Maga- 
zine'*, which is out of print and not found in libraries ! 

According to the New Haven's books, and by the 
admission of its own officials, the road was spending 
more than four hundred thousand dollars a year to in- 
fluence newspapers and magazines in favor of its pol- 
icies. (President Mellen stated that this was relatively 
less than any other railroad in the country was spend- 
ing). There was a professor of the Harvard Law 
School, going about lecturing to boards of trade, urging 
in the name of economic science the repeal of laws 
against railroad monopolies — and being paid for his 
speeches out of railroad funds ! There was a swarm of 
newspaper reporters, writing on railroad affairs for 
the leading papers of New England, and getting twenty- 
five dollars weekly, or two or three hundred on special 
occasions. Sums had been paid directly to more than 
a thousand newspapers — $3,000 to the Boston "Re- 
public", and when the question was asked "Why?" 
the answer was, "That is Mayor Fitzgerald's paper." 
Even the ultra-respectable "Evening Transcript", or- 
gan of the Brahmins of culture, was down for $144 for 
typing, mimeographing and sending out "dope" to the 
country press. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 
"Prayers" ; and when asked about that President Mel- 
len explained that it referred to a pamphlet called 
"Prayers from the Hills", embodying the yearnings of 
the back-country people for trolley-franchises to be 



The Profits of Religion 189 

issued to the New Haven. Asked why the pamphlet was 
called "Prayers", Mr. Mellen explained that "there was 
lots of biblical language in it." 

And now we come to the "Outlook" ; after five years 
of waiting, we catch our pious editors with the goods 
on them! There appears on the pay-roll of the New 
Haven, as one of its regular press-agents, getting sums 
like $500 now and then — ^would you think it possible ? — 
Sylvester Baxter! And worse yet, there appears an 
item of $938.64 to the "Outlook", for a total of 9,716 
copies of its issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and 
nine years after Christ came to bring peace on earth 
and good will towards Wall Street I 

The writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when 
dealing with those who have never practiced it towards 
him. He wrote a letter to the editor of the "Outlook", 
asking what the magazine might have to say upon this 
matter. The reply, signed by Lawrence F. Abbott, Pres- 
ident of the "Outlook" Company, was that the "Out- 
look" did not know that Mr. Baxter had any salaried 
connection with the New Haven, and that they had paid 
him for the article at the usual rates. Against this 
statement must be set one made under oath by the offi- 
cial of the New Haven who had the disbursing of the 
corruption fund — that the various papers which used 
the railroad material paid nothing for it, and "they all 
knew where it came from." Mr. Lawrence Abbott states 
that "the New Haven Railroad bought copies of the 
'Outlook* without any previous understanding or ar- 
rangement as anybody is entitled to buy copies of the 
'Outlook'." I might point out that this does not really 
say as much as it seems to ; for the President of every 



190 The Pkofits of Religion 

magazine company in America knows without any pre 
vious understanding or arrangement that any time h^ 
cares to print an article such as Mr. Baxter's, dealing 
with the affairs of a great corporation, he can sell ten 
thousand copies to that corporation. The late unla 
mented Elbert Hubbard wrote a defense of the Rocke 
feller slaughter of coal-miners, published it in "The 
Fra," and came down to New York and unloaded sev- 
eral tons at 26 Broadway ; he did the same thing in the 
case of the copper strike in Michigan, and again in the 
case of "The Jungle" — and all this without the slightest 
claim to divine inspiration or authority ! 

Mr. Abbott answers another question: "We cer- 
tainly did not return the amount to the railroad com- 
pany." Well, a sturdy conscience must be a comfort 
to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in 
the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods 
in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen ; 
and we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But 
when the thief is the most notorious in the city — ^when 
his picture has been in the paper a thousand times? 
And when the thief swears that the broker knew him? 
And when the broker's shop is full of other suspicious 
goods? Why did the "Outlook" practically take back 
Mr. Spahr's revelations concerning the Powder barony 
of Delaware? Why did it support so vigorously the 
Standard Oil ticket for the control of the Mutual Life 
Insurance Company — and with James Stillman, one of 
the heads of Standard Oil, president of Standard Oil's 
big bank in New York, secretly one of its biggest stock- 
holders ! 

Also, why does the magazine refuse to give its 



The Profits of Religion 191 

readers a chance to judge its conduct? Why is it that 
a search of its columns reveals no mention of the reve- 
lations concerning Mr. Baxter — not even any mention 
of the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon of transporta- 
tion virtues? I asked that question in my letter, and 
the president of the "Outlook" Company for some rea- 
, son failed to notice it. I wrote a second time, courteous- 
j ly reminding him of the omission ; and also of another, 
equally significant — ^he had not informed me whether 
any of the editors of the "Outlook", or the officers or 
directors of the Company, were stockholders in the 
New Haven. His final reply was that the questions 
seem to him "wholly unimportant" ; he does not know 
whether the "Outlook" pubHshed anything about the 
Baxter revelations, nor does he know whether any of 
the editors or officers or directors of the "Outlook" 
Company are or ever have been stockholders of the 
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Com- 
pany. The fact "would not in the slightest degree affect 
either favorably or unfavorably our editorial treatment 
of that corporation." Caesar's wife, it appears is above 
suspicion — even when she is caught in a brothel ! 

Clerical Camouflage 

I have seen a photograph from "Somewhere in 
France", showing a wayside shrine with a statue of the 
Virgin Mary, innocent and loving, with her babe in her 
arms. If you were a hostile aviator, you might sail over 
and take pictures to your heart's content, and you 
would see nothing but a saintly image ; you would have 
to be on the enemy's side, and behind the lines, to make 
the discovery that under the image had been dug a hole 



192 The Profits of Religion 

for a machine-gun. When I saw that picture, I thought 
to myself — there is capitalist Religion ! 

You see, if cannon and machine-guns are out in the 
open, they are almost instantly spotted and put out of 
action; and so with magazines like "Leslie's Weekly", 
or "Munsey's", or the "North American Review", which 
are frankly and wholly in the interest of Big Business. 
If an editor wishes really to be effective in holding back 
progress, he must protect himself with a camouilage of 
piety and philanthropy, he must have at his tongue's 
end the phrases of brotherhood and justice, he must be 
liberal and progressive, going a certain cautious dis- 
tance with the reformers, indulging in carefully mea- 
sured fair play — giving a dime with one hand, while 
taking back a dollar with the other ! 

Let us have an illustration of this clerical camou- 
flage. Here are the wives and children of the Colorado 
coal-miners being shot and burned in their beds by 
Rockefeller gun-men, and the press of the entire coun- 
try in a conspiracy of silence concerning the matter. In 
the effort to break down this conspiracy, Bouck White, 
Congregational clergyman, author of "The Call of the 
Carpenter", goes to the Fifth Avenue Church of Stand- 
ard Oil and makes a protest in the name of Jesus. I do 
not wish to make extreme statements, but I have read 
history pretty thoroughly, and I really do not know 
where in nineteen hundred years you can find an action 
more completely in the spirit and manner of Jesus than 
that of Bouck White. The only difference was that 
whereas Jesus took a real whip and lashed the money- 
changers. White politely asked the pastor to discuss with 
him the question whether or not Jesus condemned the 



The Profits of Religion 193 

holding of wealth. He even took the precaution to write 
a letter to the clergyman announcing in advance what 
he intended to do ! And how did the clergyman prepare 
for him ? With the sword of truth and the armor of the 
spirit? No — but with two or three dozen strong-arm 
men, who flung themselves upon the Socialist author 
and hurled him out of the church. So violent were they 
that several of White's friends, also one or two casual 
spectators, were moved to protest; what happened 
then, let us read in the New York "Sun", the most bit- 
terly hostile to radicalism of all the metropolitan news- 
papers. Says the "Sun's' report : 

A police billy came crunching against the bones of Lopez's 
legs. It struck him as hard as a man could swing it eight times. 
A fist planted on Lopez's jaw knocked out two teeth. His lip 
was torn open. A blow in the eye made it swell and blacken 
instantly. A minute later Lopez was leaning against the church 
with blood running to the doorsill. 

And now, what has the clerical camouflage to say on 
this proceeding? Does it approve it? Oh no! It was "a 
mistake", the "Outlook" protests ; it intensifies the hat- 
red which these extremists feel for the church. The 
proper course would have been to turn the disturber 
aside with a soft answer; to give him some place, say 
in a park, where he could talk his head off to people of 
his own sort, while good and decent Christians con- 
tinued to. worship by themselves in peace, and to have 
the children of their mine-slaves shot and burned in 
their beds. Says our pious editor: 

The true way to repress cranks is not to suppress them; it 
is to give them an opportunity to air their theories before any 
who wish to learn, while forbidding them to compel those to 
listen who do not wish to do so. 

13 



194 The Profits of Religion 

Or take another case. Twelve years ago the writer 
made an effort to interest the American people in the 
conditions of labor in their packing-plants. It happened 
that incidentally I gave some facts about the bedevil- 
ment of the public's meat-supply, and the public really 
did care about that. As I phrased it at the time, I aimed 
at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the 
stomach. There was a terrible clamor, and Congress 
was forced to pass a bill to remedy the evils. As a 
matter of fact this bill was a farce, but the public was 
satisfied, and soon forgot the matter entirely. The point 
to be noted here is that so far as concerned the atro- 
cious miseries of the working-people, it was not neces- 
sary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of 
Packingtown went on living and working as they were 
described as doing in "The Jungle", and nobody gave a 
further thought to them. Only the other day I read in 
my paper — ^while we are all making sacrifices in a "War 
for Democracy" — ^that Armour and Company had paid 
a dividend of twenty-one per cent, and Swift and Com- 
pany a dividend of thirty-five per cent. 

This prosperity they owe in good part to their 
clerical camouflage. Listen to our pious "Outlook", en- 
gaged in countermining "The Jungle". The "Outlook" 
has no doubt that there are genuine evils in the pack- 
ing-plants; the conditions of the workers ought of 
course to be improved ; BUT — 

To disgust the reader by dragging him through every con- 
ceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excite- 
ment and with offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel — 
all this is to overreach the object. . . .Even things actually ter- 
rible may become distorted when a writer screams them out in 



The Profits of Religion 195 

a sensational way and in a high pitched key More con- 
vincing if it were less hysterical. 

Don't you see what these clerical crook-«> are for ? 
The Jungle 

A four years' war was fought in America, a million 
men were killed and half a continent was devastated, in 
order to abolish chattel slavery and put wage slavery in 
its place. I have made a thorough study of both these 
industrial systems, and I freely admit that there is one 
respect in which the lot of the wage slave is better than 
that of the chattel slave. The wage slave is free to 
think ; and by squeezing a few drops of blood from his 
starving body, he may possess himself of machinery 
for the distribution of his ideas. Taking his chances of 
the policeman's club and the jail, he may found revolu- 
tionary organizations, and so he has the candle of hope 
to light him to his death-bed. But excepting this con- 
sideration, and taking the circumstances of the wage 
slave from the material point of view alone, I hold it 
beyond question that the average lot of the chattel 
slave of 1860 was preferable to that of the modern slave 
of the Beef Trust, the Steel Trust, or the Coal Trust. 
It was the Southern master's real concern, his business 
interest, that the chattel slave should be kept physical- 
ly sound; but it is nobody's business to care anything 
about the wage slave. The children of the chattel slave 
were valuable property, and so they got plenty to eat, 
and a happy outdoor life, and medical attention if they 
fell ill. But the children of the sweat-shop or the cot- 
ton-mill or the canning-factory are raised in a city slum, 
and never know what it is to have enough to eat, never 
know a feeling of security or rest — 



196 The Profits of Religion 

We are weary in our cradles 

From our mother's toil untold; 

We are bom to hoarded weariness 
As some to hoarded gold. 

The system of competitive commercialism, of large- 
scale capitalist industry in its final flowering ! I quote 
from "The Jungle": 

Here in this city tonight, ten thousand women are shut up in 
foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live. To- 
night in Chicago there are ten thousand men, homeless and 
wretched, willing to work and begging for a chance, yet starving, 
and fronting with terror the awful winter cold! Tonight in Chi- 
cago there are a hundred thousand children wearing out their 
strength and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their bread! 
There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery 
and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones! 
There are a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless, 
waiting for death to take them from their torments! There are 
a million people, men and women and children, who share the 
curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand and 
see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till 
the end of their days to monotony and weariness, to hunger and 
misery, to heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to ignorance and 
drunkenness and vice! And then turn over the page with me, 
and gaze upon the other side of the picture. There are a thou- 
sand — ten thousand, maybe — ^who are the masters of these 
slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they 
receive, they do not even have to ask for it — it comes to them 
of itself, their only care is to dispose of it. They live in palaces, 
they riot in luxury and extravagance — such as no words can de- 
scribe, as makes the imagination reel and stagger, makes the 
soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for a 
pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for 
horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets, 
for little shiny stones with which to deck their bodies. Their 
life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in ostentation 
and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and necessary 
things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of their fellow- 



The Profits of Religion 197 

creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, the sweat and 
tears and blood of the human race! It is all theirs — ^it comes to 
them; just as all the springs pour into streamlets, and the 
streamlets into rivers, and the rivers into the ocean — so, auto- 
matically and inevitably, all the wealth of society comes to them. 
The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver 
tends the loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man in- 
vents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired 
man sings — and all the results, the products of the labor of 
brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream and 
poured into their laps! 

This is the system. It is the crown and culmination 
of all the wrongs of the ages ; and in proportion to the 
magnitude of its exploitation, is the hypocrisy and 
knavery of the clerical camouflage which has been or- 
ganized in its behalf. Beyond all question, the supreme 
irony of history is the use which has been made of 
Jesus of Nazareth as the Head God of this blood-thirsty 
system ; it is a cruelty beyond all language, a blasphemy 
beyond the power of art to express. Read the man's 
words, furious as those of any modern agitator that I 
have heard in twenty years of revolutionary experi- 
ence : "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth ! 
— Sell that ye have and give alms! — Blessed are ye 
poor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven ! — ^Woe unto 
you that are rich, for ye have received your consola- 
tion! — ^Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall 
hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven ! — ^Woe unto 
you also, you lawyers ! — Ye serpents, ye generation of 
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ?" 

"And this man" — ^I quote from "The Jungle" again 
— "they have made into the high-priest of property and 
smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors 
and abominations of modern commercial civilization! 



198 The Profits of Religion 



1 



Jewelled images are made of him, sensual priests burn 
insense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring 
their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women 
and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cush- 
ioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by 
doctors of dusty divinity 1" 



BOOK FIVE 

The Church of the Merchants 

Mammon led them on — 
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and 

thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific .... Let none admire 
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best 
Deserve the precious bane. 

Milton. 



199 



The Profits of Religion 201 

The Head Merchant 
Ours is the era of commerce, as its propagandists 
never weary of telling us. Business is the basis of our 
material lives, and consequently of our culture. Busi- 
ness men control our politics and dictate our laws ; busi- 
ness men own our newspapers and direct their policy ; 
business men sit on our school boards, and endow and 
manage our universities. The Reformation was a re- 
volt of the newly-developing merchant classes against 
the tyrannies and abuses of feudal clericalism: so in 
all Protestant Christianity one finds the spirit, ideals, 
and language of Trade. We have shown how the sym- 
bolism of the Anglican Church is of the palace and the 
throne; in the same way that of the non-conformist 
sects may be shown to be of the counting-house. In the 
view of the middle-class Britisher, the nexus between 
man and man is cent per cent ; and so in their Sunday 
services the worshippers sing such hymns as this : 

Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee, 
Repaid a thousand fold shall be; 
Then gladly will we give to Thee, 
Who givest all. 

The first duty of every man under the competitive 
system is to secure the survival of his own business; 
so on the Sabbath, when he comes to deal with eter- 
nity, he is practical and explicit : 

Nothing is worth a thought beneath 
But how I may escape the death 

That never, never dies; 
How make mine own election sure. 
And when I fail on earth secure 

A mansion in the skies. 



202 The Profits of Religion 

Just as the priest of the aristocratic caste figures 
God as a mighty Conqueror — 

Marching as to war 
With the cross of Jesus 

Going on before — 

SO the preacher to the trader figures the divinity as a 
glorified Merchant keeping books. This Head Merchant 
has a monopoly in His line; He knows all His rivals' 
secrets, so there is no getting ahead of Him, and noth- 
ing to do but obey His Word, as revealed through His 
clerical staff. The system is oily with protestations of 
divine love ; but when you read the comments of Luther 
upon Calvin and of Calvin upon Luther, you understand 
that this love is confined to the inside of each denomina- 
tion. And even so restricted, there is not always enough 
to go around. Recently I met a Presbyterian clergy- 
man, to whom I remarked, "I see by the papers that you 
have just finished a church building." "Yes," he an- 
swered ; "and I have had three offers of a new church." 
I did not see the connection, and asked, "Because you 
were so successful with this one?" The reply was, 
"They always take it for granted that you want to 
change when you've finished a new building, because 
you make so many enemies !" 

The business man puts up the money to build the 
church, he puts up the money to keep it going ; and the 
first rule of a business man is that when he puts up the 
money for a thing he "runs" that thing. Of course he 
sees that it spreads his own views of life, it helps to 
maintain his tradition. In the days of Anu and Baal we 
heard the proclamation of the divine right of Kings; 
in these days of Mammon we hear the proclamation of 



The Profits of Religion 203 

the divine right of Merchants. Some fifteen years ago 
the head of our Coal Trust announced during a great 
strike that the question would be settled "by the Chris- 
tian men to whom God in His Infinite Wisdom has given 
control of the property interests of this country". And 
on that declaration all pious merchants stand; what- 
ever their denominations, Catholic, Episcopalian, Bap- 
tist, Methodist, Presbyterian or Hebrew, their Sab- 
bath doctrines are alike, as their week-day practices 
are alike; whether it is Rockefeller shooting his Bay- 
onne oil-workers and burning alive the little children 
of his miners; or smooth John Wanamaker, paying 
starvation wages to department-store girls and driving 
them to the streets ; or that clergyman who, at a gath- 
ering of society ladies, members of the "Law and Order 
League" of Denver, declared in my hearing that if he 
could have his way he would blow up the home of every 
coal-striker with dynamite ; or the Rev. R. A. Torrey, 
Dean of the Bible institute of Los Angeles, who re- 
fused to employ union labor on the million dollar build- 
ing of the Institute, declaring that "the Church cannot 
afford to have any dealings with a band of fire-bugs 
and murderers !" 

"Herr Beeble" 
The business of the Clerical Department of the 
Merchants* and Manufacturers' Association is to justi- 
fy the processes of trade, and to preach to clerks and 
employees the slave-virtues of frugality, humility, and 
loyalty to the profit system. The depths of sociological 
depravity to which some of the agents of this Associa- 
tion have sunk is difficult of belief. Twelve years ago 
I was invited to address the book-sellers of New York, 



204 The Pkofits of Religion 

in company with a well-known clergyman of the city, 
the Reverend Madison C. Peters. This gentleman's ad- 
dress made such an impression upon me that I recall 
it even at this distance : a string of jokes spoken with 
an effect of rapid-fire smartness, and simply reeking 
with commercialism. I could not describe it better than 
to say that it was on the ethical level of the "Letters of 
a Self-Made Merchant to His Son". Again, I attended 
a debate on Socialism, in which the capitalist end was 
taken by another famous clergyman, pastor of the Met- 
ropolitan Temple, the Rev. J. Wesley Hill. He was so 
ignorant that when he wished to prove that Socialism 
means free love, he quoted a writer by the name of 
"Herr Beeble" ; he was so dishonest that he garbled the 
writings of this "Herr Beeble", making him say some- 
thing quite different from what he had meant to say. I 
could name several clergymen of various denominations 
who have stooped to that device against the Socialists ; 
including the Catholic Father Belford, who says that 
we are mad dogs and should be stopped with bullets. 

Or consider the Reverend Thomas Dixon. This 
gentleman's pulpit-slang used to be the talk of New 
York when I was a boy ; and when I grew up, and came 
into the Socialist movement — ^behold, here he was, chief 
inquisitor of the capitalist Holy Office. I had a friend, a 
man who saved my life at a time when I was practically 
starving, and to whom therefore I owe my survival as 
a writer ; this friend had been a clergyman in a Middle 
Western state, and had preached Jesus as he really 
was, and so was hated and feared like Jesus. It hap- 
pened that he was unhappily married, and permitted 
his wife to divorce him so that he mierht marry the 



The Profits of Religion 205 

woman he loved; for which unheard of crime the or- 
ganized hypocrisy of America fell upon him like a 
thousand devils with poisoned whips. The Reverend 
Dixon's holy rage was fired ; he applied his imagination 
to my friend's story, producing a novel under the title 
of "The One Woman" ; and it is as if you were reading 
the story of Jesus and the Magdalen transmitted 
through the personality of a he-goat. Of late years this 
clerical author has turned his energies to negrophobia 
and militarism, making millions out of motion-picture 
incitements to hatred and terror. The pictures were 
made here in Southern California, and friends in the 
business have described to me the pious propagandist 
in the position of St. Anthony surrounded by swarms 
of cute and playful little movie-girls. 

Or take the Rev. James Roscoe Day, D. D., S. T. D., 
L. L. D., D. C. L., L. H. D., a leading light of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, who offers himself as comic 
relief in our Clerical Vaudeville. Dr. Day is Chancellor 
of Syracuse University, a branch of the Mental Muni- 
tions Department of the Standard Oil Company; his 
function being to manufacture intellectual weapons and 
explosives to be used in defense of the Rockefeller for- 
tune. It is generally not expected that the makers of 
ruling-class munitions should face the dirty and peril- 
ous work of the trenches ; but ten years ago, during a 
raid by an active squad of muckrake-men, Chancellor 
Day astonished the world by rushing to the front with 
both arms full of star-shells and bombs. He afterwards 
put the history of this gallant action into a volume, 
"The Raid on Prosperity"; and if you want the real 
thrill of the class-war, here is where to get it ! 



206 The Profits of Religion 

The Chancellor is a quaint and touching figure ; an 
enthusiast and dreamer, idealist and martyr, in whom 
the ordinary human virtues have been fused, absorbed, 
transformed and sublimated into a new supreme vir- 
tue of loyalty to Exploitation, patriotism for Profi- 
teering. He began life as a working-man, he tells us, in 
the good old American fashion of hustle for yourself; 
but he differed from other Americans in that he had 
an instant, intuitive recognition of the intellectual and 
moral excellence of Plutocracy. The first time he met a 
rich man, he quivered with rapture, he burst into a 
hymn of appreciation. So very quickly he was recog- 
nized as a proper person to have charge of a Mental 
Munition Works; and the ruling classes proceeded to 
pin medals upon the bosom of his academic robes — 
D. D., S. T. D., L. L. D., D. C. L., L. H. D. 

The Chancellor knows the masters of our Profit 
System, those "consummate geniuses of manufacture 
and trade by which the earth has yielded up her infinite 
treasures.'* And having been at the same time in inti- 
mate daily communion with the Almighty, he can tell 
us the Almighty's attitude towards these prodigies. 

"God has made the rich of this world to serve Him 

He has shown them a way to have this world's goods 

and to be rich towards God God wants the rich men 

.... Christ's doctrines have made the world rich, and 
provide adequate uses for its riches." Also the Chancel- 
lor knows our great corporations, and gives us the Al- 
mighty's views about them ; they mean that "the forces 
with which God built the universe have been put into 
the hands of man." Likewise by divine authority we 
learn that "the sympathy given to Socialism is ap- 



The Profits of Religion 207 

palling. It is insanity." We learn that the income tax 
is "a doctrine suited to the dark ages, only no age ever 
has been dark enough." Somebody raises the issue of 
"tainted money", and the Chancellor disposes of this 
matter also. As a Deputy of Divinity, he settles it by 
Holy Writ : "Paul permitted meat offered to idols to be 
eaten in the fear of God." And then, to make assurance 
doubly sure, he settles it with plain human logic; and 
you are astonished to see how simple, under his handl- 
ing, the complex problem becomes — ^how clear and 
clean-cut is the distinction he draws for you : 

Every boy knows that one cannot take stolen goods without 
being a partaker with the thief. But the proceeds of recognized 
business are quite a different thing. 

Holy Oil 

And here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phe- 
nomenon of Protestant Christianity at the beginning 
of the twentieth century. For the benefit of posterity 
I explain that "Billy" is a baseball player turned Evan- 
gelist, who has brought to the cause of God the crowds 
and uproar of the diamond ; also the commercial spirit 
of America's most pQpular institution. He travels like 
a circus, with all the press-agent work and newspaper 
hurrah; he conducts what are called "revivals", in an 
enormous "tabernacle" built especially for him in each 
city. I cannot better describe the Billy Sunday circus 
than in the words of a certain Sidney C. Tapp, who 
brought suit against the evangelist for $100,000 dam- 
ages for the theft of the ideas of a book. Says Mr. Tapp 
in his complaint : 

The so-called religious awakening or "trail-hitting" is pro- 
duced by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the senses 



208 The Profits of Religion 

by a combination of carrying the United States flag in one hand 
and the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting, organ playing, 
garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant, by- defendant in his 
talk leaping from the rostrum to the top of the pulpit, lying 
prone on the floor of the rostrum on his stomach in the presence 
of the vast audience and from thence into a pit to shake hands 
with the so-called "trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of plaintiff's 
thoughts contained in said books. Said harangues and vulgar- 
isms of said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing by 
said choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of 
said newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a 
habit of free and copious flow of money through religious and 
patriotic excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms, 
scurrility, buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant pre- 
tending to be in the interest of the cause of religion through 
what he denominates "hitting the trail", the real object being to 
induce a religious frenzy and enthusiasm which he announces in 
advance is to result in large audiences composed of thousands of 
people generously contributing vast sums of money on the last 
day and night of the so-called revival which is invariably ap- 
propriated by the defendant and through which scheme and de- 
vice defendant has become enormously wealthy. 

As I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and 
twice each day he holds forth to a crowd of ten or fif- 
teen thousand ; in addition the newspapers print Hteral- 
ly pages of his utterances. The entire Protestant clergy 
for a score of miles around has been hitched to his tri- 
umphal chariot, and driven captive through the streets. 
Here in this dignified city of Pasadena, home of mil- 
lionaire brewers and chewing-gum kings, all the 
churches have been plastered for weeks with cloth 
signs: "This Church is Cooperating in the Sunday 
Campaign." To give a sample of the intellectual level 
of the performance, here is what Billy has to say about 
modern thought : 

All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this 



The Profits of Religion 209 

sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism, wrig- 
gling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a beer-mug in 
Leipzig or Heidelberg! 

Whether willingly or reluctantly, the preachers sit 
upon the platform and smile while Billy thus slangs the 
devil ; and being themselves, poor fellows, at their wits 
end to draw the crowd, they watch and see how he does 
it, and then return to their own churches and try the 
same stunt; so the manners of the baseball diamond 
spread like a contagion. I open my morning paper, and 
find a picture of an intense-looking clerical gentleman, 
the Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the Baptist 
Temple. He is discussing certain slanderous rumors 
which he has heard about Billy Sunday, and he offers 
ten thousand dollars reward to anyone who can prove 
these things ; though, as he says. 

The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained, impure- 
hearted, shrivelled-souled, gossipping devils do not deserve to 
be noticed Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers, reputation-de- 
stroyers, hypocritical, black-hearted, green-eyed slanderers 

Corrupt, devil-possessed, vile debauches Immoral, sin-loving, 

vice-practicing, underhanded sneaks Carrion-loving buzzards 

and foul-smelling skunks. 

You will be prepared after this to hear that when 
the Socialists were near to carrying Los Angeles, this 
clergyman preached a sermon in support of the candi- 
date of "Booze, Gas and Railroads". 

In so far as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neg- 
lected youth of our streets from drinking, gambling and 
whoring, no one could wish him anything but success ; 
but his besotted ignorance, his childish crudity of 
mind, make it impossible that he could have any success 
except of a delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of a 



210 The Profits of Religion 

social sense; utterly unaware of the existence of the 
forces of capitalism which are causing depravity ten 
times as fast as all the evangelists in creation can rem- 
edy it. So he is precisely like the Catholics ;ith their 
"charity", cleaning up loathsome and unsightly messes 
for a thousand years, and never stopping to ask why 
such messes continue to come into existence. 

More than that, I question whether the spirit of 
commercialism which he fosters does not help the de- 
velopment of evil more than his preaching hinders it. 
The newspapers always report the cost of the taber- 
nacle, r ,. of the "free-will offering", which amounts to 
hundreds of thousands of dollars in each "campaign' ^ 
In each ci; / the expenses are guaranteed by men who 
are generally the most sinister exploiting forces of the 
community; they welcome and fete him, and he visits 
their homes, and is in every way one of the crowd. 
After the big si. strike in Paterson, N. J., the employ- 
ers, Jews and Catholics included, all subscribed a fund 
to bring Billy Sunday to that city; and it was freely 
proclaimed that the purpose was to undermine the rad- 
ical union movement. This was never denied by Sunday 
himself, and his whole campaign was conducted on that 
basis. 

Later Billy came to New York, where he met a cer- 
tain rich young man, perhaps a thousand times as rich 
as any that lived in Palestine. This young man came 
to Billy and said : "What shall I do to inherit eternal 
life?" And Billy told him to keep the commandments — 
"Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal. Do 
not bear false witness. Honor thy father and thy moth- 
er.'* The young man answered; "All these have I kept 



The Profits of Religion 211 

from my youth up." And Billy said : "Yet lackest thou 
one thing; sell all that thou hast and distribute unto 
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and 
come follow me." And when he heard this he was very 
sorrowful, for he was very rich. 

— No, I have got the story mixed up. That is what 
happened in Palestine. What happened in New York is 
that Billy said, "I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Rocke- 
feller." And Mr. Rockefeller said, "Come be my guest 
at my palace in the Pocantico Hills ; and then we will 
go together and you may preach submission to my 
wage-slaves in the oil-factories at Bayonne and else- 
where." And Billy went to the palace, and went and 
preached to the wage-slaves, telling them to beware the 
''stinking Socialists", and to concentrate their atten- 
tion on the saving of their souls ; so the rich young man 
was delighted, and he sent for all the newspaper re- 
porters to come to his office at 26 Broadway, and told 
them what a great and useful man Billy Sunday is. As 
the New York "Times" tells about it: 

Mr. Rockefeller seldom gives interviews and certainly he has 
never been charged with having an excess of verbally expressed 
enthusiasm on any subject. But he talked for an hour and a half 
about the evangelist. He was full of the subject of Billy Sunday. 
"Billy did New York a lot of good," he said. He went on to tell 
of 187 meetings held in 100 different factories, attended by 50,000 
men. "That's good work." And he expressed his satisfaction with 
Sunday's theology: "He believes the Bible from cover to cover 
and that is good enough for me." The Sunday campaign had cost 
$200,000, and "If it had stopped here, if it was not kept up, it 
would be poor business; a poor dividend on the $200,000 and the 
work invested. But we expect to get dividends in the next year." 

Again you note the symbolism of the counting- 
house ! 



212 The Profits of Religion 

Rhetorical Black-hanging 

It is the duty of the clergy, not merely to defend 
large-scale merchants while they live, but to bury them 
when they die, and to place the seal of sanctity upon 
their careers. Concerning this aspect of Bootstrap- 
lifting I quote the opinion of an earnest hater of shams, 
William Makepeace Thackeray : 

I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings 
is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the 
blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the sim- 
ulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies — all uttered in the 
name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous Thren- 
odies which have been sung from time immemorial over kings 
and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson must 
bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black- 
hanging 

And this, of course, applies not merely to kings of 
England, but to kings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of 
Oil, kings of Wall Street. When a certain king of West- 
ern railroads died, a Methodist clergyman, afterwards 
Bishop, likened his heir to the boy Christ ; a statement 
which requires for its appreciation a mention of the 
fact that this heir died of syphilis. In the year 1904 
there passed from his earthly reward in Pennsylvania a 
United States senator who had been throughout his 
lifetime a notorious and unblushing corruptionist. 
Matthew Stanley Quay was his name, and the New 
York "Nation", having no clerical connections, was free 
to state the facts about him : 

He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press, 
got his grip on the public service, including even the courts; im- 
posed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon the last three 
Presidents — ^making the latter provide for the offal of his po- 
litical machine, which even Pennsylvania could no longer stem- 



The Profits of Religion 213 

ach — and all without identifying his name with a single mea- 
sure of public good, without making a speech or uttering a party- 
watchword, without even pretending to be honest, but solely be- 
cause, like Judas, he carried the bag and could buy whom he 
would. 

Such was the lay opinion ; and now for the clerical. 
It was expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Rev- 
erend Dr. J. S. Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of 
"Matt", and without cracking a smile declared that he 
had been "a statesman who was always on the right 
side of every moral question !" 

In that same year of 1904 died the high priest of 
our political corruption, Mark Hanna. He had belonged 
to no church, but had backed them all, understanding 
the main thesis of this book as clearly as the writer of 
it. In his home city of Cleveland the eulogy upon him 
was pronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul's Epis- 
copal Church; while in the United States Senate the 
service was performed by the Chaplain, the Rev. Ed- 
ward Everett Hale. This is a name well-known in Amer- 
ican letters, as in American religious life ; it was borne 
by a benevolent old gentleman, a Unitarian and a lib- 
eral, who organized "Lend-a-Hand Clubs" and such 
like amiabilities. "Do You Love This Old Man?" the 
signs in the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy ; 
and I promptly answered "Yes" — ^for my mother took 
the "Ladies' Home Journal", and I swallowed the senti- 
mental dish-water set out for me. But when I read the 
Rev. Edward's funeral oration over the Irrev. Mark, I 
loved neither of them any longer. "This whole-souled 
child of Gk)d," cried the Rev. Edward, "who believed in 
success, and knew how to succeed by using the infinite 
powers !" You perceive that the Chaplain of the Mil- 



214 The Profits of Religion 

lionaires' Club agrees with this book, that the "infinite 
powers" in America are the powers that prey! 

The Great American Fraud 

Among the most loathesome products o± our native 
commercial greed is the patent medicine industry, "The 
Great American Fraud," as its historian has called it. 
In 1907 this historian wrote : 

Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five mil- 
lions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In consid- 
eration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an 
appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of 
varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart de- 
pressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, far in excess of all 
other ingredients, undiluted fraud. For fraud, exploited by the 
skillfuUest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. 

One by one Mr. Adams tells about these medical 
fakes : habit-forming laxatives, head-ache powders full 
of acetanilid, soothing-syrups and catarrh-cures full of 
opium and cocaine, cock-tails subtly disguised as **bit- 
ters", "sarsaparillas", and "tonics". He shows how the 
fake testimonials are made up and exploited ; how the 
confidential letters, telling the secret troubles of men 
and women, are collected by tens and hundreds of thou- 
sands and advertised and sold — so that the victim, as 
he begins to lose faith in one fake, finds another at hand, 
fully informed as to his weakness. He quotes the amaz- 
ing "Red Clause" in the contracts which the patent- 
medicine makers have with thousands of daily and 
weekly papers, whereby the makers are able to control 
the press of the country and prevent legislation against 
the "Great American Fraud." 

There are a thousand religious papers in America, 



The Profits of Religion 215 

weekly and monthly ; and what is their attitude on this 
question? Mr. Adajns tells us: 

Whether because church-going people are more trusting, and 
therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some more 
obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly reek with 
patent medicine fakes. 

He gives us many pages of specific instances : 

Dr. Smith belongs to the brood of cancer vampires. He is 
a patron and prop of religious journalism. It is his theory that 
the easiest prey is to be found among readers of church papers. 
Moreover he has learned from his father-in-law (who built a 
small church out of blood-money) to capitalize his own sectarian 
associations, and when confronted recently with a formal accu- 
sation he replied, with an air of injured innocence, that he was 
a regular attendant at church, and could produce an endorsement 
from his minister. 

And here is the "Church Advocate'', of Harrisburg, 
Pa., which publishes quack advertisements disguised as 
editorials. One of them Mr. Adams paraphrases : 

As Dr. Smith is, on the face of his own statements, a self- 
branded swindler and rascal, you run no risk in assuming that 
the Rev. C. H. Forney, D. D., L. L. D., in acting as his journalistic 
supporter for pay, is just such another as himself! 

And again : 

Will the editor of the "Baptist Watchman" of Boston explain 
by what phenomenon of logic or elasticity of ethics he accepts the 
lucubrations of Dr. Bye, of Oren Oneal, of Liquozone, of Actina, 
that marvelous two-ended mechanical appliance which "cures" 
deafness at one terminus and blindness at the other, and all 
with a little oil of mustard ? 

And again: 

The "Christian Observer" of Louisville replied to a protest- 
ing subscriber, suggesting that the "Collier" articles were writ- 
ten in a spirit of revenge, because "Collier's" could not get pat- 



216 The Profits of Religion 

ent medicine advertising. When I asked the Rev. F. Bartlett 
Converse for his foundation for the charge, he said that one 
of the typewriters must have written the letter! Doubtless also 
the same highly responsible typewriter imitated the signature 
with startling fidelity to Dr. Converse's handwriting! 

And here is — would you think it possible? — our 
"Church of Good Society" ! It has an organ in Chicago 
called the "Living Church", most dignified and decor- 
ous. You have to study quite a while to ascertain what 
denomination it belongs to ; it will not tell you directly, 
for the Anglician pose is that it is the church 

Elect from every nation, 

Yet one o'er all the earth, 
Her charter of salvation, 

One Lord, one Faith, one Birth; 
One holy name she blesses. 

Partakes one holy food, 
And toward one Hope she presses, 

With every grace endued. 

And this one holy institution was found setting at its 
peak the black flag of the trader, the "Jolly Roger" of 
the modem commercial pirate — "Caveat emptor!** To 
quote the precise words : 

The editors and publishers of the "Living Church" assume 
no responsibility for the assertions of advertisers. 

And so it threw open its columns to the claims of 
America's champion labor-baiter, the late C. W. Post, 
that his "Grapenuts" would prevent appendicitis, and 
obviate the need of operations in such cases ! 

And here is the "Christian Endeavor World", organ 
of one of the most powerful non-sectarian religious 
bodies in the country. Some one wrote complaining of 
its medical advertising, and the answer was : 



The Profits of Religion 217 

To the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not pub- 
lishing any fraudulent or unworthy medical advertising 

Trusting that you will be able to understand that we are acting 
according to our best and sincerest judgment, I remain, yours 
very truly, The Golden Rule Company, George W. Coleman, 
Business Manager. 

Whereupon the historian of "The Great American 
Fraud" remarks: 

Assuming that the business management of the "Christian 
Endeavor World" represents normal intelligence, I would like 
to ask whether it accepts the statement that a pair of "magic 
foot drafts" applied to the soles of the feet will cure any and 
every kind of rheumatism in any part of the body? Further, if 
the advertising department is genuinely interested in declining 
"fraudulent and unworthy" copy, I would call their attention to 
the ridiculous claims of Dr. Shoop's medicines, which "cure" al- 
most every disease; to two hair removers, one an "Indian Sec- 
ret", the other an "accidental discovery", both either fakes or 
dangerous; to the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it 
is "a positive cure for catarrh", in all its stages; to "Syrup of 
Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna; to 
Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical con- 
stituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure for cancer, 
a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates suffering from an 
incurable malady. All of these, with other matter, which for 
the sake of decency I do not care to detail in these columns, 
appear in recent issues of the "Christian Endeavor World". 

Riches in Glory 

There came recently to Los Angeles a "world- 
famous evangelist", known as "Gipsy" Smith. There 
was a shirt-waist strike at the time, and the girls were 
starving, and they sent a delegation to this evangelist 
to ask for help. They told him how they were mis- 
treated, exposed to insults, driven to sell their virtue be- 
cause their wage would not support life; and to their 



218 The Profits of Religion 

plea he made answer: "Get Jesus in your hearts, and 
these questions will take care of themselves !" 

So we see the most important of the many services 
which the churches perform for the merchants — ^taking 
the revolutionary hope of Jesus, for a kingdom of 
heaven upon earth, and perverting it into a dream of a 
golden harp in an uncertain future. To appreciate the 
fullness of this betrayal, take the prayer which Jesus 
dictated — so simple, direct and practical : "Give us this 
day our daily bread", and put it beside the hymns which 
the slave-congregations are trained to sing. In my 
neighborhood is a one-roomed building with a plate 
glass front, upon which I observe a painter inscribing 
in i*ed, white and blue letters the sign "Glory Mission". 
I approach him, and he drops his work and welcomes 
me with eager cordiality. Am I "living in grace"? I 
answer that I am. I have to shout the good tidings into 
his ear, as he is very deaf. He presents me with his 
card, which shows that he bears the title of "Rev- 
erend", also the sobriquet of "Mountain Missionary". I 
ask him to permit me to examine the hymn-book which 
he uses in his work, and with touching eagerness he 
presses upon me a well-worn volume bearing the title 
"Waves of Glory". I seat myself and note down a few 
of the baits it sets out for hungry wage-slaves : 

O, there's a plenty, 0, there's a plenty, 
There's a plenty in my Father's bank above! 

Riches in glory, riches in glory, 
Royal supply our wants exceed! 

Feasting, I'm feasting, 

I'm feasting with my Lord! 



The Profits of Religion 219 

Beautiful robes, beautiful robes, 
Beautiful robes we then shall wear! 

Jerusalem the golden, 
With milk and honey blest! 

Yes, I'll meet you in the city of the New Jerusalem, 
I'll be there, I'll be there! 

Blest Canaan land, bright Canaan land, 
I love to be in Canaan land! 

Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land, 
As on the highest mount I stand, 
I look away across the sea. 
Where mansions are prepared for me! 

In the sweet bye and bye 

We shall meet on that beautiful shore — 

I stopped there, being reminded of Joe Hill, poet of 
the I. W. W. who was hanged three or four years ago in 
Utah, and who used this tune in his little red book of 
revolutionary chants: 

You will eat, bye and bye. 

In the glorious land above the sky; 

Work and pray, live on hay. 

You'll get pie in the sky when you die! 

Captivating Ideals 

In one of the writer's earlier novels, "Prince Hag- 
en", the hero is a Nibelung out of Wagner's "Rhein- 
gold", who leaves his diggings in the bowels of the 
earth, and comes up to look into our superior civiliza- 
tion. The thing that impresses him most is what he 
calls "the immortality idea". The person who got that 
up was a world-genius, he exclaims. "If you can once 
get a man to believing in immortality, there is no more 



220 The Profits of Religion 

left for you to desire ; you can take everything he owns 
— you can skin him alive if it pleases you — and he will 
bear it all with perfect good humor." 

And is that merely the spiritual deficiency of a Nibe- 
lung — or the effort of a young author to be smart? 
Would you like to hear that view of the most vital of 
Christian doctrines set forth in the language of schol- 
arship and culture? Would you like to know how an 
ecclesiastical authority, equipped with every tool of 
modem learning, would set about voicing the idea that 
the function of the teaching of Heaven is to chloroform 
the poor, so that the rich may continue to rob them in 
security? 

Here under my hand is a volume in the newest dress 
of scholarship, dated 1912, and written by Professor 
Georges Chatterton-Hill, of the University of Geneva. 
Its title is "The Sociological Value of Christianity", and 
from cover to cover it is a warning to the rich of the 
danger they run in giving up their religion and ceasing 
to support its priests. It explains how "the genius of 
Christianity has succeeded in making the individual 
suffering, the individual sacrifices, which are indis- 
pensible for the welfare of the collectivity, appear as 
indispensible for the individual welfare." The learned 
professor makes plain just what he means by "individ- 
ual suffering, individual sacrifices"; he means all the 
horrors of capitalism ; and the advantage of Christian- 
ity is that it makes you think that by submitting to 
these horrors, you are profiting your own soul. "By 
making individual salvation depend on the acceptance 
of suffering, on the voluntary sacrifice of egotistical 
interests, Christianity adapts the individual to society". 



The Profits of Religion 221 

And this, as the professor explains, is not an easy thing 
to do, in a world in which so many people are thinking 
for themselves. "The only means of causing the ration- 
alized individual to consent to the sacrifice is to 

captivate him with a sufficiently powerful ideal" And 
the professor shows how beautifully Jesus can be used 
for this purpose. "Jesus, the so-called humanitarian, 
never ceased to insist on the necessity of suffering, the 
desirableness of suffering — of that suffering which a 
weak and sickly humanitarianism would fain suppress 
if it could." 

You get this, you "blanket-stiff", you "husky", or 
"wop", or whatever you are — you disinherited of the 
earth, you proletarians who have only your labor-power 
to sell, you weak and sickly ones who are condemned to 
elimination? There has come, let us say, a period of 
"overproduction" ; you have raised too much food, and 
therefore you are starving, you have woven too much 
cloth, and therefore you are naked, you have finished 
the world for your masters, and it is time for you to 
move out of the way. As the sociologist from Geneva 
phrases it, "Your suppression imposes itself as an im- 
perious necessity." And the function of the Christian 
religion is to make you enjoy the process, by "capti- 
vating you with a sufficiently powerful ideal"! The 
priest will fill your nostrils with incense, your eyes with 
candle-lights and images, your ears with sweet music 
and soothing words; and so you will perish without 
raising a finger ! "Here," reflects the professor, "we see 
how magnificently the teaching of Jesus applies to all 
classes of society !" 

Somebody has evidently put up to our Christian 



222 The Profits of Religion 

sociologist the embarrassing fact that so many of those 
who survive under the capitalist system are godless 
scoundrels. But do you think that troubles him? Not 
for long. Like all religious thinkers, he carries with 
his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical wings, 
wherewith at any moment he may soar into the em- 
pyrean, out of reach of vulgar materialists, like you and 
me. "Inequality signifies inequality of capacity," he 
explains ; but the standard whereby we judge this ca- 
pacity "cannot be the standard of the moral law." 

The laws which govern the biological evolution of man are 
known, but those which govern his moral nature cannot be 
known; the moral nature appertains to the Absolute, and hence 
is not subject to the law of inequality! 

As an exhibition of metaphysical wing-power, that 
is almost as wonderful as the flight of Cardinal New- 
man when confronted with the fact that his divinely 
guided church had burned men for teaching the Coper- 
nican view of the universe; that infallible popes had 
aga-n and again condemned this heresy ex cathedra. 
Said the eloquent cardinal : 

Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, 
and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively 
at rest. How can we determine which of these opposite state- 
ments is the very truth till we know what motion is? 

Spook Hunting 

Do not imagine that it is only in Geneva that Chris- 
tian professors realize this peril from the loss of faith. 
It is never far from the thoughts of any of them — ^for, 
of course, no man can look at the present system and 
not wonder how the poor stand it, and more es- 
pecially why they stand it. There have been many 



The Profits of Religion 223 

thinking men who have given up the miracle-business 
quite cheerfully, but have stood appalled at the idea of 
letting the lower classes find out the truth. You note 
that idea continually in the writings of Professor Grold- 
win Smith, who was a free-thinker, but also a 
bourgeois publicist, with a deep sense of responsibility 
to the money-masters of the world. He was about as 
honest a man as .ihe capitalist system can produce ; he 
was the beau ideal of the New York "Evening Post", 
which indicates his point of view. He wrote : 

It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensation in a fu- 
ture state, for a short measure of happiness here, has materially 
helped to reconcile the less favored members of the community 
to the inequalities of the existing order of things. 

When I was a student in Columbia University, I took 
a course called "Practical Ethics", under a professor 
by the name of Hyslop. The course differed from most 
of the forty that I tried, in that it gave evidence that 
the professor was accustomed to read the morning 
paper. He had learned that American politics were 
rotten ; his idea of "Practical Ethics" was to outline in 
elaborate detail a complete scheme of constitutional 
changes which would make it impossible for the "boss" 
to control the government. I think I must have been 
born with a charm against bourgeois thought, for the 
I good professor never fooled me an instant ; I remember 
I used to smile at the idea of how quickly the "boss" 
would brush through his constitutional cobwebs. The 
reforms required an elaborate campaign of publicity — 
and of course long before they could be put into prac- 
tice, the poHticians would be ready with devices to make 
them of no effect. 



224 The Profits of Religion 

Soon after this, my ethical professor resigned and 
went to hunting spooks. I don*t want to be unfair to 
him; I know that he is a determined and courageous 
man, and it seems possible that he may really have 
bagged some spooks. All I wish to point out here is the 
method he uses in seeking to persuade the heedless 
rich to support the spook-hunting industry. The very 
same argument as we got from the University of Ge- 
neva and the University of Toronto! Says our head 
spook-hunter: 

There has been no belief that exercised so much power upon 
the poor as that in a future life. The politicians, men of the 
world, have known this so well as to postpone the day of po- 
litical judgment by it for many years. 

And again: 

The Church, having lost all its battles with science, and hav- 
ing abandoned a strenuous intellectual defense of its funda- 
mental beliefs, has lost its power over the poor and the laboring 

classes The spiritual ideal of life has gone out of the masses 

as well as the classes, and nothing is left but a venture on a 
struggle with wealth. 

And again, more menacingly yet : 

The rich will learn in the dangers of a social revolution 
that the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and immortality. 

What is to be done about this? The question ans- 
wers itself: Step up, ladies and gentlemen, and empty 
your purses into the Psychical Research hat ! So that 
we may accumulate statistics as to the cost of milk and 
honey in Jerusalem the Golden ! 

You read what I had to say about Bootstrap-lifters, 
and the Wholesale Pickpockets* Association making use 
of their incantations. You admired my ability to sling 
language, but not my taste; and you certainly did not 



The Profits of Religion 225 

think that I would back my rhetoric with facts. But 
what do these quotations mean, unless they mean what 
I have said ? Are not these three professors men of cul- 
ture ? Are they not as "spiritual" as any men of learn- 
ing you can find in our present-day society? 

And now stop for a moment and put yourself in 
the position of the young student of the working-class, 
who goes to these books and discovers that truth is 
not truth, but only a bait for a snare. Who discovers 
that professors of ethics, practical or impractical, are 
not interested in justice among men, but only in col- 
lecting funds for their specialty; that in order to get 
funds, they are willing to teach the ri5h how to para- 
lyze the minds of the poor ! Do you wonder that such 
young students conclude that bourgeois thinkers do not 
know what honesty is, but are prostitutes, retainers 
and lackeys, to be kicked out of the temple of truth ? 

Running the Rapids 

And now, can you form to yourselves a clear concept 
of what it means to society that practically all its moral 
teaching should be in the hands of men who are incapable 
of clean, straight thinking? That all the intellectual 
prestige of the Church should be lent to the support of 
vagueness, futility, and deliberate evasion ? Here we are, 
all of us, caught in the most terrific social crisis of his- 
tory ; I search for a metaphor to picture our position, and 
I recall a canoe-trip in the wilds of Ontario, hundreds of 
miles down a long swift river. You sit in the bow of the 
canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead; and 
there comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go 
over it, and into a torrent of foaming white, which seizes 
you and rushes you along with the speed of a race-horse. 

15 



226 The Profits of Religion 

With every sense alert, you watch for the rocks, and 
when you see one, you dip your paddle on one side or 
the other and with a quick motion draw the canoe clear 
of the danger. If by any chance you fail to do it, over 
you go, and your partner with you, and all your belong- 
ings go down-stream, and maybe you are sucked into a 
whirlpool, and not seen for several hours afterwards. 
Precisely like this is the voyage of life, for the whole of 
society and for ever/ individual. The paddle which would 
save us from the rocks is experimental science; but in 
most of our canoes we put a man who has no paddle, but 
a Holy Book; and he casts up his eyes and murmurs 
words in ancient Greek and Hebrew, and now and then, 
when he sees an especially formidable obstruction — a 
war, or thie gonococcus, or the I. W. W. — he casts a 
holy wafer upon the foaming torrent. 

And mind you, it isn*t as if I could save myself and 
you could save yourself; we are all in the same canoe, 
and we all go overboard together. You, perhaps, have a 
son who is drafted into the trenches in winter-time, and 
drowned in blood and mud, because in Europe the Cath- 
olic party supported militarism, and kept aristocratic 
criminals in control of states. Or you find yourself in- 
volved in a marital tragedy, and in order to free yourself 
from unendurable misery, you are obliged to go to law- 
courts dominated by the tradition of Paul, the Roman 
bureaucrat, who despised women, and regarded marriage 
as a means of gratifying an unclean animal desire. "It is 
better to marry than to burn," he said, with unmatchable 
brutality; and so of course those who think him a voice 
of God can form no conception of the dignity and grace 
of love, and if you want sound and wholesome sex- 



'he Profits of Religion 22? 

conventions, you will be as apt to find them among the 
Ashantees or the Kamchadals as among the followers of 
the Apostle to the Gentiles. 

You go to a so-called "divorce-court," which is domi- 
nated by this Christian taboo, and exists for the purpose 
of barring you from a second chance at the gratification 
of your unclean animal desire. You are not permitted to 
tell your own story, for that would be "collusion;" you 
listen while your intimate friends recite the pitiful and 
shameful details of your domestic misfortune, under the 
cross-questioning of lawyers who have suppressed for the 
time whatever decent instincts they may possess, and 
follow blindly the details of a prescribed procedure, at 
the cost of all sincerity, humanity and truth. The next 
morning you find that the privacy guaranteed you by law 
has been taken from you by corrupt court officials, who 
havie sold copies of the testimony to the newspapers, so 
that all the intimate details of where you slept and where 
your wife slept and what you saw your wife doing have 
been thrown out to journalistic jackals, who scream with 
glee as they rend the carcass of your dead love. And in 
the end, perhaps, you find that you have gone through 
this horror for nothing — the august court with its Roman 
Catholic judge throws out your petition, its suspicions 
having been excited by the fact that when you discovered 
your domestic tragedy, you sought to behave like a 
civilized person, with pity and self-restraint, instead of 
like a sultan in Turkey, or a basso in an Italian grand 
opera. 

Birth Control 

I assert that the control of our thinking on ethical 
questions by minds enslaved to tradition and priestcraft 



228 The Profits of Religion 

is an unmitigated curse to the race. The armory of sci- 
ence is full of weapons which might be used to slay the 
monsters of disease and vice — but these weapons are not 
allowed to be employed, sometimes not even to be men- 
tioned. Consider the misery which is piling itself up in 
the slums of our great cities — the degenerate, the defec- 
tive, the insane, who are multiplying as never before in 
history. There exists a perfectly harmless and painless 
method ot sterilizing the hopelessly unfit, so that they 
can not reproduce their hopeless unfitness; but religion 
objects to this operation, and so the law does not make 
use of this knowledge. There exists a simple, entirely 
harmless, and practically costless method of preventing 
conception, which would enable us to check the blind and 
futile fecundity of Nature, and to multiply as gods in- 
stead of as animals. Consider the festering mass of mis- 
ery in the slums of our great cities ; consider the millions 
of terrified, poverty-hounded women, bearing one half- 
nurtured infant after another, struggling desperately to 
feed and care for them, and seeing them drop into the 
grave as fast as they are born — until finally the mother, 
worn out with the Sisyphean labor, gives up and follows 
her misbegotten offspring. Consider how many women, 
in their agony and despair, make use of the methods of 
the primitive savage, to escape from Nature's curse of 
fecundity. Dr. Wm. J. Robinson has est'imated that in 
the United States alone there are a million abortions 
every year; and consider that all this hideous mass of 
suffering — a bloody European war going on continually, 
unheeded by any newspaper correspondent — might be 
avoided by the use of a simple sterilizing formula, which 
we arie not permitted to give ! The Federation of Catholic 



The Profits of Religion 229 

Societies havie placed a law upon the statute-books of 
the nation, and of all the states as well ; the whole power 
of police and courts and jails is at the service of religious 
bigots, and a young girl is sent to prison and forcibly fed 
with a tube through the nose for telling poverty-ridden 
slum-women how to keep from becoming pregnant ! 

And go among the sleek, cynical men of the world, 
the judges and district attorneys, the commissioners of 
correction and doctors who perpetrated this infamy under 
a so-called "reform" administration in New York City — 
and what do you find? The first thing you find is that 
they themselves, one and all, practice birth-control with 
their wives or their mistresses. The second thing you 
find is that the statute-books are crowded with other 
laws which they make no pretense of enforcing; for ex- 
ample, the law which forbids the saloons to be open on 
Sunday — which law they take the liberty of understand- 
ing to mean that the saloons shall not have their front 
doors open on Sunday. You will find that they are not at 
all afraid of the religious taboos; they are afraid of the 
religious vote — and even more they are afraid of the cam- 
paign contributions of sweat-shop manufacturers and 
landlords, who cannot see what would become of pros- 
perity if the women of the slums were to cease to breed. 
So once more we discover the wolf in sheep's clothing, 
the trader, making use of Tradition-worship ; hiding be- 
hind the skirts of devout old maiden aunts and grand- 
mothers, who repeat the instructions which God gave to 
Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish 
the earth." As if God were as blind as a Fifth Avenue 
preacher, and could see no difference between the Garden 
of Eden, full of all fruits that grow and all creatures that 



230 The Profits of Religion 

run and fly and swim, and a modern East Side tenement- 
room, with an oil stove and no windows and no water- 
closet, and the price of cabbage seven cents a pound ! 

Sheep 

There are more than a hundred thousand Protestant 
churches in America. They own more than a billion dol- 
lars' worth of property, and in the West and South they 
dominate the intellectual life of the country. I do not 
wish to be unfair in what I say of them. They are far 
more democratic than the Catholic Church; they fight 
valiantly against the liquor traffic and those forms of 
graft which are obvious, or directly derived from vice. 
Thiere are among their clergy many men who are honestly 
seeking light, and trying to make their institutions a 
factor for progress. But they are caught in the spirit 
of Lutheran scholasticism, narrow and ignorant, dog- 
matic and jealous ; and they cannot help it, because they 
are pledged by their creeds and foundations to Tradition- 
worship; they have to believe certain things because 
their ancestors believed them, they have to act in certain 
ways, because of certain facts which existed in the world 
three thousand years ago, but which now are known only 
to historians. 

You are familiar with the habit of a herd of sheep to 
follow the example of their leader; if this leader leaps 
over a stick, all the rest will leap when they come to that 
spot, even though the stick may have been taken away in 
the meantime. The scientist explains this seeming- 
foolishness by the fact that sheep once lived in high 
mountains, and fled from their enemies in swiftly rushing 
herds ; when the leader leaped across an abyss, the others 
had to leap, without waiting to see in the dust and con- 



The Profits of Religion 231 

fusion. Now there are no mountains and no enemies, but 
the sheep still jump. And in exactly the same way the 
tailor still sews buttons at the back of your dress-coat, 
because a couple of hundred years ago all gentlemen wore 
swords ; in the same way our railroad builders make cars 
narrow and uncomfortable and liable to overturn, because 
a hundred years ago all cars were hauled by mules. In 
the same way the Orthodox Hebrew will eat no pork, in 
spite of the fact that the microscope affords him complete 
protection against disease ; the orthodox Catholic will not 
eat meat on Friday, because hie thinks Jesus was crucified 
on that day; the orthodox Anglican will not marry his 
deceased wife's sister, because of something he reads in 
Leviticus ; the orthodox Baptist requires total immersion 
in a climate quitie different from that of Palestine; the 
orthodox Methodist refuses to enjoy fresh air and exer- 
cise on the Sabbath. 

In ancient Judea, you see, the people lived an open-air 
life, tending sheep and working the fields; so it was an 
excellent thing for them to rest from labor one day of 
the week, and to gather in temples to hear the reading 
of the best literature of their time. But nowadays the city 
slave spends his week-days shut up in an office, poring 
over a ledger, or in a sweat-shop, chained to a sewing- 
machine. Obviously, therefore, the thing to do on the 
seventh day is to lure him into the open air, and persuade 
him to run and play. But do we do that, we human sheep? 
We write ancient Hebrew laws upon our modern statute- 
books, and if the city slave goes into a vacant lot and tries 
to play base-ball, we send a policeman and take him to 
jail, and next morning hie is fined five dollars, and prob- 
ably loses his job. 



232 The Profits of Religion 

In the city where I live, a city supposed to be free and 
enlightened, but in reality heavily burdened with 
churches, there are tennis courts built and paid for out 
of public funds, my own included ; yet I cannot use these 
tennis courts on Sunday, because of the ancient Hebrew 
taboo. My mail is not delivered to me, the swimming 
pool in the park is closed to me, the library is closed 
nearly all day. If I enquire about it, I am told that it is 
desirable that city employees should have one day's rest 
a week ; but when I ask why it might not be possible to 
relay the employees, so that they might all have one, or 
even two days* rest a week, and still give the public their 
rights on Sunday, there is no answer. But I know the 
answer, having probed our politics of hypocrisy. There 
is a "church vote" at which all politicians tremble ; there 
are clergymen, humanly jealous when their peculiar graft 
is threatened, and hoping that if the law enforces a gen- 
eral boredom, the public may be more disposed to endure 
the boredom of sermons. 

In New York City the theaters are closed on Sunday ; 
but moving pictures having come into being since the 
days of Puritan rule, the picture-shows are free to keep 
open. The law permits "sacred concerts" — which, under 
the benevolent sway of Tammany, has come to mean any 
sort of vaudeville ; so what we have is a free rein to the 
imbecilities of "Mutt & Jeff" and the obscenities of 
Anna Held and Gaby Deslys — while we bar the greatest 
moralists of our times, such as Ibsen and Brieux. 

I speak with some crossness of this Sabbath taboo, 
because of an experience which once befell me. In the 
second decade of this century of enlightenment and pro- 
gress, in our free American democracy, whose constitu- 



The Profits of Religion 233 

tion proclaims religious toleration, and forbids the estab- 
lishment by the state of any form of worship, I was made 
to serve a sentence of eighteen hours in the state prison 
of Delaware for playing a game of tennis on the Sabbath. 
I was duly arrested upon a warrant, duly sentenced by 
a magistrate, duly clad in a prison costume, duly set to 
work upon a stone-pile, duly locked up over night in a 
steel-barred cell full of vermin — in a building housing 
some five hundred wretches, black and white, thirty of 
them serving life-terms under circumstances which niever 
permitted them a breath of fresh air nor a glimpse of the 
sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise court to their 
prison, and the inmates were not permitted to speak to 
one another, but atie thdr meals in dead silence, and 
walked back to their cells with folded arms, and had their 
only occupation working for a sweat-shop contractor; 
this on the outskirts of the capital city of Wilmingtofl^, 
with no less than ninety-one churches ! The writer was in- 
formed that he would return to this institution regularly 
every week unless he abandoned his godless habit of play- 
ing tennis on a private club court on Sunday; he only 
escaped the painful punishment by making the discovery 
that at the Wilmington Country Club it was the custom 
of the leading officials of the city and state to play golf 
•every Sunday, and by threatening to employ detectives 
and have these mighty ones arrested and sent to their 
own prison. Which shows again the importance of un- 
derstanding the relationship of Superstition and Big 
Businiess! 



BOOK SIX 

The Church of the Quacks 

They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, 
And how one ought never to think of one's self, 
And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and 
drinking — 

My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking 
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho ! 
How pleasant it is to have money. 

Clough. 



235 



The Profits of Religion 237 

Tabula Rasa 

Nature has given us a virgin continent, a clean slate 
upon which to write what we will. And what are we 
writing? What is our intellectual life? I came to the 
far West, which I had been taught by novelists and 
poets to think of as a place of freedom. I came, be- 
cause I like freedom; I am staying because I like the 
climate. I find that what freedom means in the West 
is the ability of ignorant and fanatical persons to start 
son^e new, fantastical quirk of scriptural interpreta- 
tion, to build a new cult around it, and earn a living out 
of it. 

My first contact with that sort of thing was when 
I went to the Battle Creek Sanitarium to investigate 
hydrotherapy, and found myself in a nest of Seventh- 
day Adventists. Three generations or so ago some odd 
character hit upon the discovery that the Christian 
churches had let the devil snare them into resting on 
the first day of the week, whereas the Bible states dis- 
tinctly that the Lord "rested on the seventh day". So 
here is a million dollar establishment, with a thousand 
or two patients and employees, and on Friday at sun- 
down the silence of death settles upon the place, and 
stays settled until sundown of Saturday, when every- 
thing comes suddenly to life again, and there is a little 
celebration, like Easter or New Year's, with what I 
used to call "sterilized dancing" — the men pairing with 
men and the women with women. 

They are decent and kindly people, and you learn to 
put up with their eccentricities ; it is really convenient 
in some ways, because, as not all the city shares their 
delusions, there are some stores open every day of the 



^38 The Profits of Religion 

week. But then you discover that the Sanitarium is 
training "medical missionaries" to send to Africa, and 
is teaching these supposed-to-be-scientists that evolu- 
tion is a doctrine of the devil, and not proven anyhow ! 

You get the shrewd little doctor who is running this 
establishment alone in his office, and he will smile and 
admit that of course it is not necessary to take all Bible 
phrases literally; but you know how it is — ^there are 
different levels of intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know 
how it is. You have an institution founded upon a cer- 
tain dogma, and run by means of that dogma, and it is 
hard to change without smashing things. It is especial- 
ly convenient when servants and nurses have a religious 
upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the 
patients. People will come from all over the country, 
and pay high prices to stay in such a sanitarium ; you 
can make vegetarians of them, which you think more 
important than teaching abstract notions about their 
being descended from monkeys. Also you can manufac- 
ture vegetarian foods for them, and build up an enor- 
mous business — so obtaining that Power which is the 
thing desired of men. 

This is but one illustration of a sort of thing of 
which I could cite a hundred. The city in which I live is 
headquarters of another sect, the "Pentecostal Church 
of the Nazarene" ; primitive Methodists, Bible-worship- 
pers not content with the King James version, but go- 
ing back to the Sinaitic MS. They have a "University", 
located in one of the most beautiful spots that Nature 
ever made; an institution with seventy-five students. 
A couple of years ago I happened to meet the "presi- 
dent," who was a preacher with grease on the 



The Profits of Religion 239 

ample expanse of his black broadcloth waistcoat, and a 
speech full of the commonest grammatical errors, such 
as "you was" and "I seen". The past year witnessed a 
split, and the founding of a brand new church and 
"University" — ^because one of the preachers insisted 
upon preaching so much that the students got no 
chance to study ; also because he sent home a rich man's 
daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her 
fleshly nature. 

And there is an even stranger phenomenon in the 
locality, taking you back to the Libyan desert and the 
time of Thais. A lady friend of mine, generously 
blessed with this world's goods, asks me have I seen 
the hermit. "Hermit?" I say, and she replies, "Didn't 
you know there was a hermit ? He lives on a mountain, 
in a cave, and never has anything to do with the world. 
He has no books; he contemplates spiritually." I pic- 
ture my friend with her large limousine, a rolling palace 
full of ladies, drawing up at the door of this hermit's 
cave. "He received you ?" I ask. "Yes, he was quite po- 
lite." "And what was your impression of him?" "Oh, 
how he stank!" I answer that this is the odor of sanc- 
tity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty ; 
I have to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that 
there are definite physiological phenomena incidental 
to the ecstatic life. 

The Book of Mormon 

Or let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the head- 
quarters of a still stranger cult. 

On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, 
the Angel of the Lord delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., 



240 The Profits of Religion 

an ignorant farmer-youth in a "backwoods" part of 
New York State, some plates which had "the appear- 
ance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is 
the habit of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unex- 
pected places and to make miraculous revelations to 
men in humble walks of life ; so, as devout believers, we 
hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates 
were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the Angel 
thoughtfully provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and 
Thummim, two magic stones with which to read the 
records. They proved to deal with a mystery which 
has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries 
— the fate of the "lost ten tribes of Israel", who were 
now revealed to have been the ancestors of the Amer- 
ican Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a new re- 
ligion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in 
general; so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of 
Manchester, N. Y., there was formally launched the 
"Church of the Latter Day Saints." Smith turned over 
to his followers hir, translation of the miraculous plates, 
called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously genuine, for 
it read precisely like the books which we already know 
are the revealed word of Gk)d. But, on chance that this 
might not be sufficient, we were offered in the preface 
two documents, the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", 
and the "Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses". The 
latter being the shorter, may be quoted : 

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, 
unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the 
translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which 
hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as 
many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did 
handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings there- 



The Profits of Religion 241 

on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work and of 
curious worlananship. And this we bear record with words of 
soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have 
seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith 
hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our 
names unto the world, to witness that which we have seen, and 
we lie not, God bearing witness of it. 

Christian Whitmer 
Jacob Whitmer 
Peter Whitmer, Jr. 
John Whitmer 
Hiram Page 
Joseph Smith, Sr. 
Hyrum Smith 
Saml. H. Smith 

The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter 
Day Saints bore out the AngeFs prophesies and proved 
conclusively its divine origin ; it was persecuted as the 
saints of old were persecuted, and its followers pro- 
ceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, 
just as the divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven 
from place to place, they built at Nauvoo, 111., a beau- 
tiful temple, according to plans revealed in a vision, 
exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, 
where they have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and 
some 300,000 followers. The United States govern- 
ment, not being entirely Biblical, objected to their prac- 
tice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as 
many wives as they could support ; the government con- 
fiscated the church's property, and forced it to conceal 
the practice of polygamy, as is done by elderly church 
members in other parts of the country. Recently the 
head of the church, who bears the title of "Prophet, 
Seer and Revelator", was persuaded to permit an ex- 

16 



242 The Profits of Religion 

amination of one of its secret plates, the "Book of 
Abraham", by egyptologists, who found that it was or- 
dinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but 
containing prayers to the sun-god. But this will of 
course make no difference to the devout followers of 
Joseph — any more than it has made to devout Cath- 
olics and Episcopalians that German scholars have 
proven that the Bible legends and ritual have come 
from the Babylonians, and that the four gospels date 
from the second and third centuries after Christ. 

Holy Rolling 

All over America you will find these weird Bible- 
cults, some of them pathetic, some of them dangerous, 
some of them merely grotesque. Thus, for example, 
there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the 
"Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed him- 
self up in scarlet and purple robes with stars on. 
Through his Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Com- 
pany he became enormously wealthy; he finally an- 
nounced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember 
as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and 
P. T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant 
never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the me- 
tropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and 
passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to 
his son; straightway, according to the rule of all re- 
ligions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting up, 
and suing one another in the law-courts. 

Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jump- 
ers", ghastly sects which cultivate the religious hys- 
terias, and have spread like a plague among the women 



The Profits of Religion 243 

of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The 
"Holy Rollers", who call themselves the "Apostolic 
Church", have a meeting place here in Pasadena, and 
any Sunday evening at nine o'clock you may see the 
Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the worshippers, 
causing moans and shrieks and convulsions ; you may 
see a woman holding her hands aloft for seventeen min- 
utes by the watch, making chattering sounds like an 
ape. This is called "talking in tongues" and is a sign 
of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come back 
at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire con- 
gregation, men and women, prostrate on the floor, or 
hanging over the benches ; and maybe a child moaning 
in terror, having a devil cast out. 

You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to 
throw yourself into these convulsions. Here is a paper 
called "Trust", which is "published Monthly (D. V.) in 
the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training 
School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The Pentecostal 
Baptism", and tells the story of her experiences. She 
"camped on the Word of God," she declares. 

I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the mis- 
sion told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay there 
all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay there all 
night." I went down, and there was plenty of "let go" in me. I 
cried, and prayed all I knew, and got wonderfully loosed 

Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God 
told me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. 
He spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God 
that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same 
in me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said to 
me, "That's mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord, and if 
You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in the sails." 

That's the way I came through. One morning I was just 



244 The Profits of Religion 

getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy 
likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" 
I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. 
I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it 
does not tire you. 

And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: 
pubhshed monthly, or as often as the Lord leads." The 
editor quotes the Bible, "Call upon the name of the 
Lord," and explains that "Call means call." The word 
appears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal 
persons — it means working yourself into a frenzy of 
agitation ; as the editor puts it, "you must lay hold of 
the horns of the altar." He goes on to exhort — ^the 
bold face being his : 

Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few 
minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every 
word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more liberty 
in calling. In a very little while you will be dead to the room, dead 
to the chair, dead to everyone around you, dead to all and tre- 
mendously alive to your desperate need and emptyness; this con- 
viction will grow as you increase calling upon Him. It maybe 
you'll weep, it maybe you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will 
be deranged, ii; maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a 
moment let your mind rest on the condition of your person. 
Open your mouth and God has promised to fill it. Ask persist- 
ently until the very floor seems to sink beneath you and the 
fountains of the deep, of your heart let loose. Like David, "pour 
out your soul" like one would pour water out of a bucket. I 
have seen hundreds get through right at this point. When self- 
thought, reticence, decorum, reserve, propriety and dignity had 
all been thrown to the four winds of heaven. Self was then oblit- 
erated and consciousness of person gone. Draw near to God and 
He will draw near to you saith the scripture, but you must 
draw near to Him first. 

These enthusiasts derive their practices from the 
Shakers, a sect which originated in England, but was 



The Profits of Religion 245 

driven by persecution to the New World. The Shakers 
call themselves the "United Society of True Believers 
in Christ's Second Coming," and were founded by Ann 
Lee, who variously termed herself the "Female Christ", 
the "Holy Comforter", and the "God-anointed Wom- 
an". They might be termed the suffragettes of re- 
ligion, for they pray always to "Our Father and Moth- 
er, which are in heaven." They were taught the con- 
venient doctrine that their Founder had "spiritual il- 
lumination", so that any evidence of the senses used 
against her might deceive. She governed through ter- 
ror, holding that by her mental powers she could in- 
flict torment upon any of her followers. Fortunately she 
taught absolute celibacy, and so there are now only 
about a thousand of her disciples. 

Bible Prophecy 

This far western country swarms with those fanat- 
ics who await the return of Christ, and find in Bible 
chronology positive evidence that he is coming on a 
specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture on Socialism 
that some eager old lady does not come up to me and 
point out how futile are my hopes, because the Millen- 
ium will come before the Revolution. Several times I 
have come on an item in the newspapers, telling of a 
group of people, sometimes whole villages, selling their 
goods and going out into the fields to shout and sing 
and pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His 
Angels in the skies. I have in my hand a pamphlet en- 
titled "Shekineh: The Glory of God in Israel, Facts 
Mathematically Foretold, of the Soon Coming of Our 
Blessed Lord." It is earnestly, yearningly written, in 



^46 The Profits of Religion 

that spirit of feeble-minded affectionateness which 
the Bible-sects seem to encourage : 

Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a won- 
derful story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus 
is soon coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next 
week perhaps our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may not 
end till the close of the A. M. year, which will be March 20th, 
1897. But let us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh, my Christian 
friends, live near the Blessed Christ, and gain eternal life 
through Jesus Our Lord! 

In the public library I find another pamphlet, en- 
titled "The Our Race," which proves that the "lost ten 
tribes of Israel*' are not the American Indians, but the 
Irish ! And here is a publication of the "Watch Tower 
Bible and Tract Society," declaring : 

The great psrramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of 
the ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage un- 
der "a Draconis" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first ascend- 
ing passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand Gallery sym- 
bolizes the Gospel Age, Its upper step symbolizes the approach- 
ing period of tribulation and anarchy, "Judgment'* upon Chris- 
tendom. 

It is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California 
sunshine revising this manuscript, when a decorous- 
looking young man approaches, having a sack over his 
shoulder. "From the Bible-students," he says politely, 
and hands me a little paper, "The Bible Students' 
Monthly : an Independent, Unsectarian Religious News- 
paper, Specially devoted to the Forwarding of the Lay- 
men's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of God 
and G^od of Humanity." The leading article is headed 
"The Fall of Babylon: Ancient Babylon a Type—Mys- 
tic Babylon the Antitype: Why Christendom must 
Suffer — ^the Final Outcome." A note explains : 



The Profits of Religion 247 

The following article is extracted from Pastor Russeirs 
posthumous volume entitled "The Finished Mystery," the 7th in 
the series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published subse- 
quent to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction of bein^ 
the most fearless and powerful writer of modern times on ec- 
clesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume, which is called 
"his last legacy to the Christians on earth," is found a thorough 
exposition of every verse in the entire book of Revelation and 
also an elucidation of the obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. The book 
contains 608 pages, handsomely bound in embossed cloth. 

Pastor Russell used to publish a two-column ser- 
mon in some hundreds of Sunday newspapers, togeth- 
er with a presentment of his features — solemn, stiff, 
white-whiskered, set off with a "choker" and a black 
broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in 
America, but if you have an impulse to despair for 
your country, remember that it produced Mark Twain 
and Artemus Ward, as well as Pastor Kussell and the 
Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one passage 
from "The Finished Mystery", in order that the reader 
may know what it means to "hold the distinction of 
being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern 
times on ecclesiastical subjects." Pastor Russell does 
not approve of the Methodists, and he quotes twelve 
verses of Revelation, line by line and phrase by phrase, 
showing how the evil course and downfall of the Wes- 
leyan system were divinely foretold. Thus : 

"But that they should be tormented five months." — ^In sym- 
bolic time, 150 years — 5X30 = 150. (Ezek. 4;6.) Wesley became 
the first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9:1.) When the Methodist 
denomination, with all the others, was cast off from favor in 
1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by preaching what 
Presbyterians describe as "Conscious misery, eternal in dura- 
tion" came to an end legally, and to a large extent actually. — 
Rev. 9:10. 



248 The Profits of Religion 

P. S. A few months pass, and while this book is go- 
ing to press, "The Finished Mystery" is suppressed by 
the government and several score "Bible Students" are 
landed in jail for sedition. 

Koreshanity 

Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are 
other ancient writings with strange nomenclature and 
ritual and symbolism, calculated to impress the unlet- 
tered; also our prophets have imaginations of their 
own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and sym- 
bolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus 
there is Dr. Newo Newi New, who called himself "Arch- 
bishop of the Newthot Church," and gathered about 
him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco, and 
was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or 
there is "Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible," a work of brand- 
new revelation with a brand-new view of the universe 
and all things therein : 

The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise net 
only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and sig- 
nificance of names and titles commonly applied to the Trans- 
cendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are presided 
over by chiefs, chosen for their superior development in wisdom 
and love. For our solar system to cross one of these provinces 
requires about 3,000 years, and between them are belts of high 
Etherian light which take several years to pass over. The pass- 
age of each province is a cycle of earthly history, and the 
crossings are called Dawns of Dan. 

And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by 
the Lord to Dr. C. R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. 
This new seer took the name of Koresh, which is He- 
brew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from Joseph, the Stone 
of Israel, the Sun-Man ; the illuminating center of the 



The Profits of Religion 249 

Son of man", and went out on the streets of the city to 
preach that the earth is a hollow sphere with the stars 
inside. The street urchins of the pork-packing metrop- 
olis threw stones at him, and the irreverent newspapers 
took up his adventures, with the result that followers 
gathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Flor- 
ida, with a dignified magazine called "The Flaming 
Sword", and a collection of propaganda volumes : "The 
Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan Uni- 
i versology and the New Geodesy" ; "The Immortal Man- 
hood, the Laws and Processes of its Attainment in the 
Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by Lord Chester"; 
"The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Stand- 
ing of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-sci- 
ence" of this Chicago revelator is based, first upon some 
precise measurements of the earth which prove that 
its surface is concave ; and second upon some philolog- 
ical discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the 
"cross of Christ" is explained in a sense of the word 
more common among horse-breeders than among 
theologians : 

The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the cross 
of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the Lord God, 
in order to perpetuate his own being, descends into the race of 
sensuality. 

And again, when someone asks about meteors : 

The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved 
up from their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors which 
fall to the earth are composed of metallic, mineral, and geolog- 
ical substances, being materialized or actually created in the 
atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process from zones or belts 
periodically open, which precipitate their contents in the form 
or shape of meteors." 



250 The Profits of Religion 

And perhaps I ought also to quote the "Indicia of 
Human Progress", by "Berthaldine, Matrona". I don't 
know what a "Matrona" is — unless it is a female mat- 
ron. This female matron tells me that now is the "Time 
of Restitution", and explains that "the prolification of 
the human race has reached a fruition of the adultery 
of the truth and good of the Lord with the fallacies and 

evils of the mortal hells" We have come, it seems, 

to the "age of Pisces", which is "one of the greatest 
radical prolification"; and what we now need is the 
"power of polarization", so that we may join the "White 
Horse Army of the Most High", which is the organiza- 
tion of the "Aquarian age", proclaimed by Koresh on 
January 15th, 1891. 

Mazdaznan 

And here is another and even more startling revela- 
tion from Chicago, given to a seer by the name of Dr. 
Otoman Prince of Adusht Ha'nish, prophet of the Sun 
God, Prince of Peace, Manthra Magi of Temple El Kat- 
man, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and Envoy of 
Mazdaznan living, Viceroy-Elect and International 
Head of Master-Thot. If you had happened to live near 
the town of Mendota, Illinois, and had known the Ger- 
man grocer-boy named Otto Hanisch, you might at 
first have trouble in recognizing him through this 
transmogrification. I have traced his career in the files 
of the Chicago newspapers, and find him herding sheep, 
setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism, 
and fake spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then 
the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion", and then the 
cult of Brighouse, who claimed to be Christ returned. 



The Pkofits of Religion 251 

Finally he sets himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magi, 
teaching Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to 
the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metrop- 
olis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries 
in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine 
on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties 
at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms — "the 
white and pinkish for males, the blue-tinted for fe- 
males". He wears a long flowing robe of pale grey 
cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid 
shoes, and he sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner 
Studies", price five dollars per volume, with information 
on such subjects as : 

The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets 
of Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic At- 
traction and Electric Mating. 

A Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to 
jail for six months; but that does not harm his cult, 
which now has a temple in Chicago, presided over by a 
lady called Kalantress and Evangelist; also a "North- 
ern Stronghold" in Montreal, an "Embassy" in Lon- 
don, an "International Aryana" in Switzerland, and 
"Centers" all over America. At the moment of going 
to press, the prophet himself is in flight, pursued by a 
warrant charging him with improper conduct with a 
number of young boys in a Los Angeles hotel. 

I have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are 
a farrago of every kind of ancient mysticism — ^paper 
and binding from the Bible, illustrations from the 
Egyptian, names from the Zoroastrian, health rules 
from the Hindoos, laws from the Confucians — ^price 
ten dollars per volume. Would you like to discover your 



252 The Profits of Religion 

seventeen senses, to develop them according to the Ga- 
Llama principle, and to share the "expansion of the 
magnetic circles" ? Here is the way to do it : 

Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one ex- 
halation, speak slowly: 

Open, thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth 
hidden by the vase of dazzling light. 

Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following 
sentence upon one exhalation as before: 

Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I 
may behold Thy True Being. 

I have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper 
telling of the prophet's arriving there. He takes the 
front page with the captivating headline: "Women 
Didn't Think Till They Put On Corsets". The interview 
tells about his mysteriousness, his aloofness, his bird- 
like-diet, and his personal beauty. "Despite his seventy- 
three years, Ha'nish evidences no sign of age. His keen 
blue eyes showed no sign of wavering. There were no 
wrinkles on his face, and his walk was that of a man of 
forty." The humor of this becomes apparent when we 
mention that at Ha'nish's trial, three or four years ago, 
he was proven to be thirty-five years old ! 

Being thus warned as to the accuracy of American 
journalism, we shall not be taken in by the repeated 
statements that the Mazdaznan prophet is a millionaire. 
But there is no doubt that he is wealthy; and as all 
Americans wish to be wealthy, I will quote his formula 
of prosperity, his method of accomplishing what might 
be called the Individual Revolution : 

When hungry and you do not know where to get your next 
piece of bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has pro- 
vided you with everything that will meet all cases of emergency. 



The Profits of Religion 253 

Place your teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing against 
the lower teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close lips immedi- 
ately, exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe again; if saliva 
forms in your mouth, hold your breath so you can swallow it first 
before you exhale. You thus take out of the air the metal-sub- 
stance contained therein; you can even taste the iron which you 
convert into substance required for making the blood. Should 
you feel that, although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there 
is a lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over 
lower, keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe and 
you can even taste the metals named. Then should you feel you 
need more gold element for your brain functions, place your back 
teeth together just as if you were to grind the back teeth, taking 
short breaths only. You will then learn to know that there is 
gold and silver all around us. That our bodies are filled with 
quite a quantity of gold. 

Black Magic 

What all this means is that we have a continent, 
with a hundred million half -educated people, materially 
prosperous, but spiritually starving; so any man who 
possesses personality, who looks in any way strange 
and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, 
and can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice 
— such a man can find followers. Anybody can do it 
with any doctrine, from anywhere, Persia or Pata- 
gonia, Pekin or Pompei. I would be willing to wager 
that if I cared to come out and announce that I had had 
a visit from God last night, and to devote such literary 
and emotional power as I possess to communicating a 
new revelation, I could have a temple, a university, and 
a million dollars within five years at the outside. And 
if at the end of five years I were to announce that I 
had played a joke on the world, some one of my follow- 
ers would convince the faithful that I had been an 



254 The Profits of Religion 

agent of God without knowing it, and that the leader- 
ship had now been turned over to him. 

I would not be understood as believing that all our 
cults are undiluted fakery, for that would be doing in- 
justice to some earnest people. There are, in this coun- 
try, many followers of the Persian reformer, Abbas 
Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and who have 
what I am inclined to think is the purest and most dig- 
niiied religion in existence. There was a man named 
Jacob Beilhardt, who founded a cult in Illinois with the 
painful name of "Spirit Fruit Colony", who neverthe- 
less was a man of spiritual insight, a true mystic ; he 
was honest, and so he failed, and died of a broken heart. 
Also there are the Christian Scientists and the Theoso- 
phists, so exasperating that one would like to throw 
them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us to ^ift 
over their mountains of chaff for the grains of truth 
which will bear fruit in future. 

While we western races have been exploring the 
natural world and perfecting the mechanical arts, the 
Hindoo students have been exploring the subconscious 
and its strange powers. What Myers and Lodge and 
Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us 
today they had hints of a long time ago ; and doubtless 
they have hints of other things, upon which our sci- 
entists have not yet come. I have friends, perfectly 
sane and competent people, who tell me that they can 
see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging 
character. Shall I say that there are no auras, simply 
because I do not happen to have this gift of seeing 
them ? In the same way, having read Gurney's "Phan- 
tasms of the Living," I am not ready to ridicule the 



The Profits of Religion 255 

claim of the Yogi adepts, that they are able to project 
some kind of astral body, and to communicate with one 
another from distant places. But granting such occult 
powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? 
Simply new floods of charlatanism, elaborate and com- 
plicated systems of ritual and metaphysic for the de- 
luding and plundering of the credulous. 

I have seen the thing working itse." out in one case 
known to me. A young man had a gift oi mental heal- 
ing ; I know, because I saw it work ; but it did not always 
work, and that was annoying. He was penniless and 
had a taste for power, rnd to eke out his erratic en- 
dowment he got himsell; books :x Eastern lore, and day 
by day as i watched him 1 couO see xAm becoming more 
and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding. To- 
day he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the lan- 
guage of a dozen mystic cults at his tongue's end, and 
the reverent regard of many wealthy ladies. I have 
never tried to break through his guard, but 1 feel cer- 
tain that he is a deliberate charlatan. 

This is an economic process, automatic and irresist- 
ible. Just as the manufacturer of honest foods is driv- 
en out by the adulterator, so the worker of miracles 
drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we have 
here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with 
"swamis" using soft yellow robes and soft brown eyes 
to win the souls of idle society ladies. These teachers of 
ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of barbarians ; 
but they stay — whether because of love of man or 
woman, I do not pretend to say. 

There are the Theosophists of many brands, with 
schools and institutes and temples and colonies, and a 



256 The Profits of Religion 

doctrine as complex and detailed and fantastic as that 
of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to the 
writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian 
army officer's daughter, whose career reads like a tale 
out of the Arabian Nights. And there is Annie Besant, 
who was once an ardent worker in the Social-demo- 
cratic Federation ; H. M. Hyndman tells of his dismay 
when she went to India and walked in a procession be- 
tween two white bulls ! Here in California is Madame 
Tingley, with a colony and a host of followers in a min- 
ature paradise. Men work at money-lending or manu- 
facturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and 
tired they make the thrilling discovery that they have 
souls; the theosophists cultivate these souls and they 
leave their money to the soul-cause, and there are law- 
suits and exposes in the newspapers. For, you see, 
there is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating mil- 
lionaire souls ; there are slanders and feuds, just as in 
soulless affairs. "Don't have anything to do with 
Madame Tingley," whispers a Theosophist lady to my 
wife ; and when my wife in all innocence inquires, "Why 
not?" the awe-stricken answer comes, "She practices 
black magic!" 

Let me add that I do not say that she practices black 
magic. I do not believe that she could practice it, even 
if she wanted to— I do not believe in black magic. My 
purpose is merely to show how theosophists quarrel: 
going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze 
image of the Babylonian fire-god : 

Let them die, but l«t me live! 

Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper! 

Let them perish, but let me increase! 

Let them become weak, but let me wax strong! 



Th^^ Profits of Religion 257 

Mental Malpractice 

This is the other side of the fair shield of religious 
faith. Why, if there be a power which loves and can 
be persuaded to aid us, may there not also be a power 
which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy ? No re- 
ligion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore 
none has ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. 
Even Jesus was pursued by Satan, and the Holy Cath- 
olic Church has its ceremonies for the exorcising of 
demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And 
here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaim- 
ing the unreality of all evil, their ability to banish dis- 
ease by convincing themselves that they are perfect in 
God — yet tormented by a squalid phobia called "Mental 
Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism". 

Christian Science is the most characteristic of 
American religious contributions. Just as Billy Sunday 
is the price we pay for failing to educate our base-ball 
players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is the 
price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daugh- 
ters. 

That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, 
because I have a little of it myself. At first my opin- 
ion was that her "Science" made its way by 
curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a 
person has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you 
can work easy miracles by persuading him to think that 
he is well ; and if he has nothing to do but think that he 
is well, he will help you to build marble churches and 
maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have ex- 
perimented with mental healing — enough to satisfy 
myself that the subconscious mind which controls our 

17 



258 The Profits of Religion 

physical functions can be powerfully influenced by the 
will. 

I told the story of some of these experiments in 
Hearst's Magazine for April, 1914. Suffice it here to 
say that if you will lay your hands upon a sick person, 
forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily changes 
you desire, and concentrating the power of your will 
upon them, you may be surprised by the results, es- 
pecially if you possess anything in the way of psychic 
gifts. Yoii do not have to adopt any theories, you do 
not have to do it in the name of any divinity, ancient 
or modern ; the only bearing of such ideas is that they 
serve to persuade people to make the experiment, and 
to make it with persistence and intensity. So it has 
come about that "miracles" of healing are associated 
with "faith" ; and so it comes about that scientists are 
apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet 
and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere ; they 
have proven that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments 
may be entirely hysterical in nature, and may be cured 
by the simplest form of suggestion. Understanding 
this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that 
cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the 
grotto of Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus 
performed all the miracles of healing attributed to him 
— including the raising up of people pronounced to be 
dead by the ignorance of that time. I am convinced that 
in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a uni- 
verse as vast as the universe of the atom or of the 
stars. 

The Christian Scientists have got hold of this pow- 
er; they have mixed it up with metaphysic and divin- 



The Profits of Religion 259 

ity, and built some four or five hundred churches, and 
printed the Mother Church alone knows how many mil- 
lion pamphlets and books. I once invested three of 
my hard-earned dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, 
and let myself be stunned and blinded by the flapping 
of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated moonshine 
— as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and 
other orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove 
to you in one minute. What interests me about the 
phenomenon is not the slinging of tremendous words, 
but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them. 
There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Chris- 
tian Science ; what it is for is to remove your wen, to 
nail down your floating kidney, and to enable you to 
hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the 
growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail ; contempor- 
aneous therewith, and corresponding thereto, we see in 
our religious life the development of a Church of the 
Full Pocket-Book. 

It is a strict religion — strictly cash. The heads of 
the cult do not issue cheap editions of "Science and 
Health, With Key to the Scriptures", to relieve the suf- 
fering of the proletariat ; no — ^the work is copyrighted, 
in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the 
price is from three to seven-fifty, according to bind- 
ing. Treatments cost from three dollars to ten, whether 
you come and get them or take them over the telephone. 
And we have no nonsense about charity, we don't worry 
about the poor who fester in our city slums ; because 
poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to 
all men a way to get rich right off the bat. You may 
come to our marble churches and hear people testify 



260 The Profits of Religion 

how through the power of Divine Mind they were en- 
abled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you 
don't avail yourself of the opportunity, the fault is 
yours, and yours also the punishment. 

As to the management of the Church, the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy is a Bolshevik democracy in compar- 
ison. The Church is controlled by an absolutely irre- 
sponsible self -perpetuating body of five men, who alone 
dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a 
Christian Science healer who was listed as an "author- 
ized practitioner", and who withdrew from the Church 
because of its attitude on public questions. He sends me 
a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the 
"Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed an- 
alysis of the position of that paper on such issues as the 
Ballinger land-frauds. He writes : 

I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church 
is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have 
heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is that he 
is one of the richest men in the movement. 

After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette 
brought in a carefully drawn bill to compel steamship 
companies to provide life-boats and trained crews. The 
"Christian Science Monitor" opposed this bill; and 
when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out 
a quaint bit of metaphysical logic, as follows : 

One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single 
boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded down 
with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not imder- 
gtood! 



The Profits of Religion 261 

Science and Wealth 

The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our 
Yankee religion from the day of its birth. In the first 
edition of her new Bible "Mother" Eddy dropped the 
hint to her readers : "Men of business have said this 
science was of great advantage from a secular point of 
view." And in her advertisements she threw aside all 
pretense, declaring that her work "Affords an oppor- 
tunity to acquire a profession by which one can ac- 
cumulate a fortune." When her pupils did accumulate, 
she boasted of their success ; nor did she neglect her 
own accumulating. 

It has been a dozen years since I looked into this 
cult ; in order to be sure that it has not been purified 
in the interim, I proceed to a street corner in my home 
city, where is a stand with a sign: "Christian Science 
Literature." I take four sample copies of a magazine, 
the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the 
Mother Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimoni- 
als of Healing". In the issue of August 11, 1917, Mary 
C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames, England, tes- 
tifies: "Through a number of circumstances unneces- 
sary to relate, but proving conclusively that the result 
came not from man but from God, employment was 
found." In the issue of December 2, 1916, Frances Tut- 
tle of Jersey City, N. J., testifies how her sister was suc- 
cessfully treated for unemployment by a scientist 
practitioner. "Every condition was beautifully met." 
In the same issue Fred D. Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., 
testifies : "Soon after this wonderful truth came to me. 
Divine Love led me to a new position with a responsible 
firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire 



262 The Profits of Religion 

satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in 
less than a year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, 
Eliza Fryant of Agricola, Miss., testifies how she cured 
her little dog of snake-bite and removed two painful 
corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4, 
1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how 
it suddenly occurred to her that because God is All, 
she would drop her planning and outlining in regard to 
real estate properties, "upon which for nine months all 
available material methods were tried to no effect." 
The result was a triumph of "Principle". 

While working in the yard one morning and gratefully com- 
muning with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I should 
stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to look at 
the property. I obeyed this very distinct command, and in about 
an hour I greeted two people who had searched almost the en- 
tire city for just what we had to offer. They had been directed 
to our place by what to material sense would seem an accident, 
but we know it was the divine law of harmony in its universal 
operation. 

After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in 
a Christian Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should 
proclaim : 

My friends, do you know that since the world began Chris- 
tian Science is the only system which has intelligently related 
religion to business ? Christian Science shows that since all ideas 
belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business belongs to Him. 

As I said, these people have the new-old power of 
mental healing. They blunder along with it blindly, 
absurdly, sometimes with tragic consequences; but 
meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know 
nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt 



The Profits of Religion 263 

mingled with fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers 
whom the pill-doctors cannot help flock to the healers 
of the "Church of Christ, Scientist". According to the 
custom of those who are healed by "faith", they swal- 
low line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic 
and divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America 
precisely what we saw in B. C. twentieth-century As- 
syria — a host of worshippers, giving their worldly 
goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of 
fanatics and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast 
enterprise of graft, and harvesting that thing desired 
of all men, power over the lives and destinies of others. 

And of course among themselves they quarrel ; they 
murder one another^s Mortal Minds, they drive one an- 
other out, they snarl over the spoils like a pack of 
hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one 
of her students — a perfectly amiable and harmless 
youth whose only offense was that he had gone his own 
way and was healing the sick for the benefit of his own 
pocket-book : 

Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out 
the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy virtue, 
put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent, befouling thy 
track with the trophies of thy guilt — I say, Behold the "cloud" 
no bigger than a man's hand already rising on the horizon of 
Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty head the hailstones of doom. 

And again : 

The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental meth- 
od with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and will 
fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him through. Let 
him remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is 
robbing, committing adultery and killing. When he is attempt- 



264 The Profits of Religion 

ing to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the 
quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life and giving 
to the grave yoUth and its rainbow hues; when he is turning 
back the reviving sufferer to his bed of pain, clouding his first 
morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that hour 
shall point to the tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the 
sword of justice. 

New Nonsense 

In a certain city of America is a large building given 
up entirely to the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are 
not floors but "Promenades", and have walls of glass, 
behind which, as you stroll, you see bonnets from Paris 
and opera cloaks from London, furs from Alaska and 
blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa 
and beads from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and 
cherries from Japan, fortune-tellers from Arabia and 
dancing-masters from Petrograd and "naturopaths" 
from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual 
count, containing everything that could be imagined 
or desired by a pretty lady, whether for her body, or 
for that vague stream of emotion she calls her "soul". 
One of the seventy-three shops is a "Metaphysical Li- 
brary", having broad windows, and walls in pastel tints, 
and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray 
wicker chairs in which the reader will please to be 
seated, while we probe the mysteries of an activity 
widely spread throughout America, called "New 
Thought." 

We begin with a shelf of magazines having mys- 
tical titles : Azoth ; Master Mind ; Aletheian ; Words of 
Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept; Nautilus; True 
Word ; Astrological Bulletin ; Unity ; Uplift ; Now. And 
then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the 



The Profits of Religion 265 

eye and the purse ; also shelves of imposing-looking vol- 
umes containing the lore and magic of a score of races 
and two score of centuries — ^together with the very- 
newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft. 

As in the case of Christian Science, these New 
Thoughters have a fundamental truth, which I would 
by no means wish to depreciate. It is a fact that the 
mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that we 
are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It 
is a fact that by appeal to it we can perform seeming 
miracles of mental and moral regeneration; we can 
stimulate *the flow of nervous energy and of the blood, 
thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But 
the fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not 
bar the fact that He has certain ways of working, 
which He does not vary ; and that it is our business to 
explore and understand these ways, instead of setting 
our fancies to work imagining other ways more agree- 
able to our sentimentality. 

Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's 
decree that we shall plant wheat and harvest it, and 
grind and bake and distribute it. Under conditions pre- 
vailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree that 
we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in 
freight cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with 
capital borrowed from a national bank ; in other word^, 
that our daily bread shall be the plaything of exploiters 
and speculators, until such a time as we have the in- 
telligence to form an effective political party and estab- 
lish Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study 
the ways of God in the literature of the New Thought, 
do you find anything about the Millers' Trust and the 



266 The Profits of Religion 

Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these agencies of 
starvation ? You do not ! 

What you find is Bootstrap-lifting ; you find gentle- 
men and lady practitioners shutting their eyes and lift- 
ing their hands and pronouncing Incantations in awe- 
inspiring voices — or in Capital Letters and LARGE 
TYPE : "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, GOD WILL 
PROVIDE. Bread is coming to you ! Bread is coming 
to you ! ! BREAD IS COMING TO YOU ! ! !" 

You think this is exaggeration ? If so, it is because 
you have never entered the building of the pretty 
ladies, and sat in the gray wicker chairs of 'the meta- 
physical library. One of the highest high-priestesses 
of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named Eliza- 
beth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess 
Elizabeth tells you : 

I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the 
right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come. 

I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full 
of testimonials and advertisements for the conjuring 
of prosperity. "Are you in the success sphere?" asks 
one exhorter ; the next tells you "How to enter the si- 
lence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of 
advancement." Another tells : "How a Failure at Sixty 
Won Sudden Success ; From Poverty to $40,000 a year 
— a Lesson for Old and Young Alike." The lesson, it 
appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called "Power of 
Will." And here is another book : 

Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Suc- 
cess, can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the 
Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake 



The Profits of Religion 267 

who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh 
the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and 
Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted. 

"Dollars Want Me" 

I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty- 
one called "All Sufficiency in All Things," published by 
the "Unity School of Christianity", in Kansas City; it 
explains that God is God, not merely of the Soul, but 
also of the Kansas City stockyards. 

This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands 
ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or vdsh, 
just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same yesterday, today 
and forever. Abundant Supply by the manifestation of the Fath- 
er within us, from within outward, is as much a legitimate out- 
come of the Christ life or spiritual understanding as is bodily 

healing "Know that I am God — all of God, Good, all of 

Good. I am Life. I am Health. I am Supply. I am the Sub- 
stance." 

And here is W. W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a 
work called "Mind Power". Would you like to be an 
Impressive Personality ? Mr. Atkinson will tell you ex- 
actly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the 
Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the- 
eye Look ; he will tell you what to say, he will write out 
for you Incantations which you may pronounce to your- 
self, to convince yourself that you have Power, that the 
INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its MIGHT is 
yours. Mr. Atkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of 
some of his fellow Bootstrap-lifters to employ these 
arts for money-making; but you notice that his mag- 
azine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline the adver- 
tisements of such too-practical practitioners. 



268 The Profits of Religion 

Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of 
Wallace Wattles, who tells in one pamphlet "How to Be 
a Grenius", and in another pamphlet "How to G^t What 
you Want". The thing for you to do is — 

Saturate your mentality through and through with the 

knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO 

Look upon the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the de- 
partment store, and make it grow; you can. 

And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of ac- 
quisitiveness : 

Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling: I 
CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible to me. 
I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the Power of Suc- 
cess. 

Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the 
treadmill of the capitalist system — a "soda-jerker*', a 
"counter-jumper", a book-keeper for the Steel Trust. 
His chances of rising in life are one in ten thousand ; 
but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the 
price of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison 
Brown, who was first a Unitarian clergyman, and then 
an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San Francisco, 
an Honorary Vice-President of the International New 
Nonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker 
or counter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by 
mental machinery. All calculations of probabilities are 
delusions of the senses; if you have faith, you can 
move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman*s, 
Macy's, or the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself" 
is the title of one of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which 
he explains that — 



The Profits of Religion 269 

Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your 
faith. A doubt cuts the connection. 

A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its 
thirtieth edition, bears the thrilling title of "Dollars 
Want Me!" In it Mr. Brown lays claim to being a pio- 
neer: 

I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance of 
the thought that each individual has the ability so to radiate his 
mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to feel him, love 
him, seek him, and thus draw at will all things needed for his 
unf oldment from the universal supply. 

"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers: 

Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as 
you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They have 
no power till you give them power. Make them feel this through 
your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance of your work. 
They will then come to you to be used. 

"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers 
himself : 

Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the 
Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and, in 
the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait for the 
manifestation. You have sown the thought seed. 

And our author goes on to hand out packages of 
these thought-seeds — "Affirmations" as they are called, 
in the jargon of the New Conjuring: 

I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom. 
I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized. 
I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the 
dollar. 

The Indwelling Power cares for my purse. 
I own whatever I desire. 



270 The Profits of Religion 

I can afford to use dollars for my happiness. 

I always have a good bank account. I actually see it. 

My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE. 

Spiritual Financiering 

If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the 
palace, and that of the non-conformist sects of the 
counting-house, that of the International New Non- 
sense Alliance is of Wall Street and the "ticker". What 
is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks Wil- 
liam Morris Nichols in the publication of the " *Now* 
Folk", San Francisco : 

Is it low or high ? Is your credit with the Bank of the Uni- 
verse good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you sure 
of its being honored? 

If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are 
on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering. 

Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of 
Spirit ? If not, then you should at once open one therewith. For 
no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of spiritual 
funds with that Bank. 

And how do you proceed to open your account? It 
is very simple : 

Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire. 
Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the 
way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material sup- 
ply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to be, in 
freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in earnest, 
will do. 

I turn over the advertisements of this publication 
of the " 'Now' Folk". One offers "The Business Side of 
New Thought." Another offers "The Books Without 
an If", with your money back IF you are not satisfied ! 



The Profits of Religion 271 

Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. 
Another quotes Shakespeare: "'Tis the mind that 
makes the body rich." Another offers two copies of the 
"Phrenological Era" for ten cents. 

There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime 
which cannot find dupes among the readers of this New 
Nonsense. One notice commands : 

Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled 
"Strands of Gold" or "From Darkness into Light!" 

Another announces: 

The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gos- 
pel of Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's Re- 
membrance, the Akashic Records. 

And here is an advertisement published in Mr. At- 
kinson's paper : 

Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What 
you appear to be to others? What you really are? What you 
want to be ? What would overcome your present and future dif- 
ficulties ? Write to X, Philosopher. You will receive full partic- 
ulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your service. 
No problem is too big or too small for Numerology. Under- 
standing awaits you. 

And looking in the body of the magazine, you find 
this Philosopher imparting some of this Understand- 
ing. Would you like, for example, to understand why 
America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels 
of the Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, 
which are numbered 2951561591, which added make 
45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not at first see what 
that has to do with the War — until the Philosopher 
points out that "9 in the number of completion, indicat- 



272 The Profits of Religion 

ing the end of a cosmic cycle." That, of course, explains 
everything. 

And here is a work on what you perhaps thought 
to be a dead science, Astrology. It is called "Lucky 
Hours for Everybody: A True System of Planetary 
Hours* by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar." It 
teaches you things like this : 

Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters 

relating to gold-mining The Sun negative rules the emerald, 

the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours 
are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to hire serv- 
ants of both sexes 

A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several 
vain attempts to transact important business in the hours ruled 
by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she was nearly 
always fortunate in what she began in the hours ruled by Saturn. 
Upon investigation I found her name was ruled by the Sun nega- 
tive, and that she had Capricorn with Saturn therein as her 
ascendant at birth, which explains. 

And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported 
in the "Weekly Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his 
mental power over two-horse power oil engines which 
fail to act. "Going a little apart, he came back in a few 
minutes and said : The engine is all right now and will 
work satisfactorily.* and without any further difficulty 
it did." We are told how Dr. Rawson gave a demon- 
stration of his method to a newspaper reporter the 
other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking into 
space, he apparently became absorbed in deep contem- 
plation and said aloud: "There is no danger; man is 
surrounded by divine love; there is no matter; all is 
spirit and manifestation of spirit." 

You might at first find difficulty in believing what 



The Profits of Religion 273 

can be accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this ; 
not merely are two-horse power oil engines made to 
work, but the whole gigantic machine of Prussian mil- 
itarism is prevented from working. You may recall how 
Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of 
Mons was taken up and made into a Catholic legend 
over-night ; now here is a New-Nonsense legend, com- 
plete and perfect, going the rounds of our Nonsense 
magazines : 

London, Dec. 14. — Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have 
been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with 
**charmed lives" are being made every day, according to Fred- 
erick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has found 
the miraculous way by which they are developed. He calls it 
"audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the powers of 
God by right thinking," is the agency through which Dr. Rawson 
declares he can so treat a man that he will not be harmed when 
hundreds of men are being shot dead beside him. This amazing 
treatment includes a new tjrpe of prayer. It is being admin- 
istered to hundreds of men audibly, and to hundreds more by 
letter. Nothing since the war began has aroused so much talk of 
modem miracles as have many of the statements of Dr. Raw- 
son 

At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of 
"No Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across. 

Then Capt. —, , who practices this method of prayer, 

treated them for an hour before they started, and not a man was 
knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in his 
brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is spiritual and 
perfect and could not be touched. A bullet fired from a revolver 
only five yards away hit him over the chest, tore his shirt and 
went out at the shoulder. But it never penetrated his chest. He 
was frequently in a hail of shells and bullets which did not touch 
him. 

The Graft of Grace 

All this is grotesque ; but it is what happens to re- 

18 



274 The Profits of Religion 

ligions in a world of commercial competition. It hap- 
pens not merely to Christian Science and New Thought 
religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and Mor- 
mon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Pres- 
byterian and Methodist and Baptist religions. For you 
see, when you are with the wolves you must howl with 
them; when you are competing with fakirs you must 
fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of 
the New Thought fakers with contempt ; but have I not 
shown the Catholic Church publishing long lists of 
money-miracles ? Have I not shown the Church of Good 
Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Epis- 
copal communion, pretending to call rain and to banish 
pestilence, to protect crops and win wars and heal those 
who are "sick in estate" — that is, who are in business 
trouble ? 

The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my 
fellows ; but that is not so. I am an economic scientist, 
analyzing the forces which operate in human societies. 
I blame the prophets and priests and healers for their 
fall from idealism ; but I blame still more the competi- 
tive wage-system, which presents them with the altern- 
ative to swindle or to starve. 

For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has 
frequently got along with almost none, and with only a 
rag for clothing ; in Palestine and India, where the cli- 
mate is warm, a sincere faith has been possible for 
short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to 
influence the minds of men has to have books and news- 
papers; he will find a telephone and a typewriter and 
postage-stamps hardly to be dispensed with, also in 
Europe and America some sort of a roof over his meet- 



The Profits of Religion 275 

ing place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of 
us, in the net of the speculator and the landlord. He 
has to get money, and in order to get it he has to im- 
press those who already have it — people whose minds 
and souls have been deformed by the system of para- 
sitism and exploitation. 

So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he re- 
fuses, he becomes a martyr, and founds a church which 
becomes a church of charlatans. I care not how sincere, 
how passionately proletarian a religious prophet may 
be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him 
in a competitive society — to be the founder of an or- 
ganization of fools, conducted by knaves, for the ben- 
efit of wolves. That fate befell Buddha and Jesus, it be- 
fell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi, John Fox 
and John Calvin and John Wesley. 

A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiri- 
tualism" describes to me the conditions in that field. 
The mediums are people, mostly women, with a peculiar 
gift ; whether we believe in the survival of personality, 
or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact 
that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new 
faculty which science must investigate. They come, 
poor people mostly — ^for the well-to-do will seldom give 
their time to exacting and wearisome experiments. 
They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shiver- 
ing with cold, obviously undernourished ; and their sur- 
vival depends upon their producing "phenomena" — 
which phenomena are capricious, and will not come at 
call. So, what more natural than that mediums should 
resort to faking? That the whole field should be reek- 
ing with fraud, and science should be held back from 



276 The Profits of Religion 

understanding an extraordinary power of the subcon- 
scious mind ? 

Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have 
been telling us about the wondrous powers of a mulatto- 
woman, a manicurist at the city's most fashionable 
hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my wife and I 
went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth 
my wife recognized her as the person who has been 
trying for several months to get me on the telephone to 
tell me how the spirit of Jack London is seeking to 
communicate with me ! The seance was a public one, a 
gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured so- 
ciety-women, and half of confederates, people with the 
dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A mega- 
phone was set in the middle of the floor, the room was 
made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the 
spirit of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the 
megaphone with a Bowery accent, and gave communi- 
cations from relatives and friends of the various con- 
federates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The 
spirit of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And 
then came the voice of a child: "Mamma! Mamma!" 
"It is little Georgie !" cried Dr. Holmes ; and one of the 
society ladies started, and answered, and presently 
burst into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence — es- 
pecially when you recall that the story of this mother's 
bereavement had been published in all the papers a 
couple of months before ! 

And this kind of swindling is going on every night 
in every city of America. It goes on wholesale for 
months every summer at Lily Dale, in New York State, 
where the spiritualists hold their combination of Chau- 



The Profits of Religion 277 

tauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going 
on in the field of mental healing, and of all other "oc- 
cult" forces and powers, whether real or imaginary. It 
is going on with new spiritual fervors, new moral ideal- 
isms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new sculp- 
ture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere — using 
the mental and moral and artistic forces of life as a 
means of delivering himself from economic servitude. 
Everywhere I turn I see it — credulity being exploited, 
and men of practical judgment, watching the game and 
seeing through it, made hard in their attitude of ma- 
terialism. How many men I know who sit by in sullen 
protest while their wives drift from one new quackery 
to another, wasting their income seeking health and 
happiness in futile emotionalism ! How many kind and 
sensitive spirits I know — ^both men and women — -who 
pour their treasures of faith and admiration into the 
laps of hierophants who began by fooling all mankind 
and ended by fooling themselves ! 

In each one of the cults of what I have called the 
"Church of the Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps 
millions of entirely sincere, self-sacrificing people. They 
will read this book — ^if anyone can persuade them to 
read it — ^with pain and anger ; thinking that I am mock- 
ing at their faith, and have no appreciation of their de- 
votion. All that I can say is that I am trying to show 
them how they are being trapped, how their fine and 
generous qualities are being used by exploiters of one 
sort or another; and how this must continue, world 
without end, until there is order in the material affairs 
of the race, until justice has been established as the law 
of man's dealing with his fellows. 



BOOK SEVEN 

The Church of the Social Revolution 

They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ- 
Infidel hordes that believe not in man ; 
Stable and stall for his birth sufficed, 

But his tomb is built on a kingly plan. 
They have hedged him round with pomp and parade, 
They have buried him deep under steel and stone- 
But we come leading the great Crusade 
To give our Comrade back to his own. 

Waddell. 



The Profits of Religion 281 

Christ and Caesar 

In the most deeply significant of the legends con- 
cerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up 
into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms 
of the world in a moment of time ; and the devil said 
unto him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and 
the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to 
whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt 
worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we know, an- 
swered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he 
really meant it; he would have nothing to do with 
worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he chose the 
career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death 
of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three cen- 
turies his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing 
his proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all 
things in common, except women ;" they lived as social 
outcasts, hiding in deserted catacombs, and being 
thrown to lions and boiled in oil. 

But the devil is a subtle worm ; he does not give up 
at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the 
strength of the forces which battle for him. He failed 
to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church. 
He came when, through the power of the new revolu- 
tionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremend- 
ous power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the 
subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than 
the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become 
a convert to the new faith, so that the Church and he 
might work together for the greater glory of God. The 
bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for their 
organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off 



282 The Profits of Religion 

laughing to himself. He had got everything he had 
asked from Jesus three hundred years before; he had 
got the world^s greatest religion. How complete and 
swift was his success you may judge from the fact that 
fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian com- 
pelled to pass an edict limiting the donations of emo- 
tional females to the church in Rome ! 

From that time on Christianity has been what I 
have shown in this book, the chief of the enemies of 
social progress. From the days of Constantine to the 
days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and Caesar 
have been one, and the Church has been the shield and 
armor of predatory economic might. With only one 
qualification to be noted: that the Church has never 
been able to suppress entirely the memory of her pro- 
letarian Founder. She has done her best, of course ; we 
have seen how her scholars twist his words out of their 
sense, and the Catholic Church even goes so far as to 
keep to the use of a dead language, so that her victims 
may not hear the words of Jesus in a form they can 
understand. 

'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung I 

Only by priests, and in the Latin tongue! 
But in spite of this, the history of the Church has 
been one incessant struggle with upstarts and rebels 
who have filled themselves with the spirit of th6 Mag- 
nificat and the Sermon on the Mount, and of that bit- 
terly class-conscious proletarian, James, the brother of 
Jesus. 

And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor 
which has given life to Christianity, which enables it to 
keep its hold on the hearts of men today, is precisely 



The Profits of Religion 283 

this new wine of faith and fervor which has been 
poured into it by generation after generation of poor 
men who Hve like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus 
as criminals, and are revered like Jesus as founders and 
saints. The greatest of the early Church fathers were 
bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their own 
time. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was 
turned out of office, exiled and practically martyred; 
St. Basil was persecuted by the Emperor Valens; St. 
Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor 
Theodosius ; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, 
and was exiled and finally martyred. In the same way, 
most of the heretics whom the Holy Inquisition tor- 
tured and burned were proletarian rebels ;. the saints 
whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders 
which gave it life for century after century, were men 
who sought to return to the example of the carpenter's 
son. Let us hear a Christian scholar on this point. Prof. 
Rauschenbusch : 

The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the 
Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic 
and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest doctrinal 
reformer before the reformation; but his eyes, too, were first 
opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining 
in a great national and patriotic movement against the alien 
domination and extortion of the Church. The Bohemian revolt, 
made famous by the name of John Huss, was quite as much 
political and social as religious. Savonarola was a great demo- 
crat as well as a religious prophet. In his famous interview with 
the dying Lorenzo de Medici he made three demands as a condi- 
tion for granting absolution. Of the man he demanded a living 
faith in God's mercy. Of the millionaire he demanded restitu- 
tion of his ill-gotten wealth. Of the political usurper he de- 
manded the restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence. 
It is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent to 



284 The Profits of Religion 

the first, hard to assent to the second, and impossible to concede 
the last. 

Locusts and Wild Honey 

This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to 
a time long before Jesus ; it seems to have been inher- 
ent in the religious character of the Jews — that stub- 
born independence, that stiff-necked insistence on the 
right of a man to interview God for himself and to find 
out what God wants him to do ; also the inclination to 
find that Grod wants him to oppose earthly rulers and 
their plundering of the poor. What is it that gives to 
the Bible the vitality it has today? Its literary style? 
To say that is to display the ignorance of the cultured ; 
for elevation of style is a by-product of passionate con- 
viction ; it is what the Jewish writers had to say, and 
not the way they said it, that has given them their hold 
upon mankind. Was it their insistence upon conscience, 
their fear of God as the beginning of wisdom ? But that 
same element appears in the Babylonian psalms, which 
are as eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, 
yet are read only by scholars. Was it their sense of the 
awful presence of divinity, of the soul immortal in 
its keeping? The Egyptians had that far more than the 
Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their religious 
books. Or was it the love of man for all things living, the 
lesson of charity upon which the Catholics lay such 
stress ? The gentle Buddha had that, and had it long be- 
fore Christ ; also his priests had metaphysical subtlety, 
greater than that of John the Apostle or Thomas 
Aquinas. 

No, there is one thing and one only which distin- 
guishes the Hebrew sacred writings from all others, 



The Profits of Religion 285 

and that is their insistent note of proletarian revolt, 
their furious denunciations of exploiters, and of luxury 
and wantonness, the vices of the rich. Of that note the 
Assyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian writing contain 
not a trace, and the Egyptian hardly enough to men- 
tion. The Hindoos had a trace of it; but the true, na- 
tural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They 
were rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they 
are today in Petrograd and New York; the spirit of 
equality and brotherhood which spoke through Ezekiel 
and Amos and Isaiah, through John the Baptist and 
Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through 
Marx and Lassalle and Jaures, and speaks today 
through Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl 
Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and Morris Hillquit and 
Abraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph 
Fels endowment. 

The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylon- 
ian Empire was 20% ; the laws of Manu permitted 24%, 
while the laws of the Egyptians only stepped in to pre- 
vent more than 100%. But listen to this Hebrew law: 

If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee, 
then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or a 
sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no interest 
of him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy brother may 
live with thee. Thou shalt not give him any money upon usury, 
nor lend him thy victuals for increase. 

And so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond 
servants, and commanding that at the end of fifty years 
all debtors shall have their debts forgiven and their 
lands returned to them. And note that this is not the 
raving of agitators, the demand of a minority party ; it 
is the law of the Hebrew land. 



286 The Profits of Religion 

There has been of late a great deal of new discovery 
concerning the early Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes 
the results as follows : 

The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon 
peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional sani- 
tary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of widows, or- 
phans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no economic inde- 
pendence should eat and be satisfied; that loans should be given 
cheerfully, not only without any interest, but even at the risk of 
losing the principal. To withhold a loan because the year of re- 
lease is at hand in which the principal is no longer recoverable, is 
described as a grave sin. When you are compelled to free your 
slaves, you must give them sufficient capital to embark upon 
some industry which shall prevent their falling back into slavery. 
A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must be no more 
crushing of the poor out of existence, for God cares for these 
people who have been driven to poverty, and they shall never 
cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall be no poor with you, 
for the Lord will bless you, if you will obey these laws. 

But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant 
contact with the capitalist ideas of the heathen em- 
pires. The Jews fell from the stern justice of their 
fathers; and so came the prophets, v/ild-eyed men of 
the people, clad in cameFs hair and living upon locusts 
and wild honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and 
capitalists with their furious denunciations. And al- 
ways they incited to class war and social disturbance. 
I quote Conrad Noel again : 

Nathan and Gad had been David's political advisers, Abijah 
had stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab, Elisha 
had fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders against the 
misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces the landlords and 
the usurers, Micah charges them with blood-guiltiness; Jere- 
miah and the latter prophets, though they strike a more intimate 
note of personal repentance, strike it as the prelude to that na- 
tional restoration for which they hunger as exiles. 



The Profits of Religion 287 

The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old Testament 
point of view. Just as the prophets of the nineteenth century 
thundered against the "Christian" employers of Lancashire, and 
told them their houses were cemented with the blood of little 
children, so Isaiah cries against his generation: "Your govern- 
ing classes companion with thieves; behold you build up Sion 
with blood." Their ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an 
abomination to God. "When ye spread forth your hands, I will 
hide mine eyes from you. Your hands are full of blood." The 
poor man is robbed. The rich exact usury. "Woe unto you that 
lay house to house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone 
in the midst of the land." "Wash you, make you clean, put away 
the evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 
learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the 
fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason to- 
gether, saith the Lord. Though your sins be blood-colored, they 
shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they 
shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the 
good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured 
by the sword. 

Mother Earth 

And nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist 
agitators, following the same tradition, possessed by 
the same dream as the ancient Hebrew prophets. I 
have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be that the 
reader is not familiar with her writings, and does not 
realize how very Biblical she is, both in point of view 
and style. Let me quote a few sentences from a recent 
issue of her paper, "Mother Earth", on the subject of 
our ruling classes and their social responsibility : 

Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to 
do to you! Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are 
falling from your backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted 
that the ink on them should turn to acid and eat holes in your 
pockets and your skins. You have piled up your dirty millions, 



288 The Profits of Religion 

but what wages have you paid to the poor devils of farm hands 
you have robbed ? And do you imagine they won't remember it 
when the revolution comes ? You loll on soft couches and amuse j 
yourselves with your mistresses; you think you are "it" and the 
world is yours. You send militiamen and shoot down our organiz- 
ers, and we are helpless. But wait, comrades, our time is coming. 

Doubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author 
of this tirade is now in jail, where she can no longer 
defy the laws of good taste. They always put the an- 
cient prophets in jail ; that is the way to know a prophet 
when you meet him. Let me quote another prophet who 
is now behind bars — Alexander Berkman, in his "Pris- 
on Memoirs of an Anarchist", discussing the same sub- 
ject of plutocratic pretension : 

Tell me, you four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave 
it to you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go 
all the way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in youi 
title ? I tell you that the beginning and the root of your wealth 
is necessarily in injustice. And why? Because Nature did not 
make this man rich and that man poor from the start. Nature 
does not intend for one man to have capital and another to be 
a wage-slave. Nature made the earth to be cultivated by all. 
The idea we Anarchists have of the rich is of highwaymen, stand- 
ing in the street and robbing every one that passes. 

Or take "Big Bill" Haywood, chief of the I. W. W. 
Hear what he has to say in a pamphlet addressed to the 
harvest-hands he is seeking to organize : 

How much farther do you plutes expect to go with youi 
grabbing? Do you want to be the only people left on earth? 
Why else do you drive out the workers from all share in Na- 
ture, and claim everything for yourselves ? The earth was made 
for all, rich and poor alike; where do you get your title deeds to 
it? Nature gave everything for all men to use alike; it is onlj 
your robbery which makes your so-called "ownership". Capital 
has no rights. The land belongs to Nature, and we are all Na- 
ture's sons. 



The Profits of Religion 289 

Or take Eugene V. Debs, three times candidate of 
the Socialist Party for President. I quote from one of 
his pamphlets : 

The propertied classes are like people who go into a public 
theatre and refuse to let anyone else come in, treating as private 
property what is meant for social use. If each man would take 
only what he needs, and leave the balance to those who have 
nothing, there would be no rich and no poor. The rich man is 
a thief. 

I might go on citing such quotations for many 
pages ; but I know that Emma Goldman and Alexander 
Berkman and Bill Haywood and Gene Debs may read 
this book, and I don't want them to close it in the mid- 
dle and throw it at me. Therefore let me hasten to ex- 
plain my poor joke ; the sentiments I have been quoting 
are not those of our modern agitators, but of another 
group of ancient ones. The first is not from Emma Gold- 
man, nor did I find it in "Mother Earth". I found it in 
the Epistle of James, believed by orthodox authorities 
to have been James, the brother of Jesus. It is exactly 
what he wrote — save that I have put it into modern 
phrases, and changed the swing of the sentences, in 
order that those familiar with the Bible might read it 
without suspicion. The second passage is not in the 
writings of Alexander Berkman, but in those of St. 
John Chrysostom, most famous of the early fathers, 
who lived 374-407. The third is not from the pen of 
"Big Bill" but from that of St. Ambrose, a father of 
the Latin Church, 340-397, and the fourth is not by 
Comrade Debs, but by St. Basil of the Greek Church, 
329-379. And if the reader objects to my having fooled 
him for a minute or two, what will he say to the Chris- 

19 



290 The Profits of Religion 

tian Church, which has been fooling him for sixteen 
hundred years? 

The Soap Box 

This book will be denounced from one end of Christ- 
endom to the other as the work of a blasphemous infi- 
del. Yet it stands in the direct line of the Chris- 
tian tradition : written by a man who was brought up 
in the Church, and loved it with all his heart and soul, 
and was driven out by the formalists and hypocrites in 
high places ; a man who thinks of Jesus more frequent- 
ly and with more devotion than he thinks of any other 
man that lives or has ever lived on earth ; and who has 
but one purpose in all that he says and does, to bring 
into reality the dream that Jesus dreamed of peace on 
earth and good will toward men. 

I will go farther yet and say that not merely is this 
book written for the cause of Jesus, but it is written in 
the manner of Jesus. We read his bitter railings at the 
Pharisees, and miss the point entirely, because the word 
Pharisee has become to us a word of reproach. But this 
is due solely to Jesus ; in his time the word was a holy 
word, it meant the most orthodox and respectable, the 
ultra high-church devotees of Jerusalem. The way to 
get the spirit of the tirades of Jesus is to do with him 
what we did with the early church fathers — translate 
him into American. This time, since the reader shares 
the secret, it will not be necessary to disguise the Bible 
style, and we may follow the text exactly. Let me try 
the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, omitting seven 
verses which refer to subtleties of Hebrew casuistry, 
for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or St. 
Alphonsus to find a parallel : 



The Profits of Religion 291 

Then Jesus mounted upon a soap-box, and began a speech, 
saying. The doctors of divinity and Episcopalians fill the Fifth 
Avenue churches; and it would be all right if you were to listen 
to what they preach, and do that; but don't follow their actions, 
for they never practice what they preach. They load the backs 
of the working-classes with crushing burdens, but they them- 
selves never move a finger to carry a burden, and everything 
they do is for show. They wear frock-coats and silk hats on Sun- 
days, and they sit at the speakers* table at the banquets of the 
Civic Federation, and they occupy the best pews in the churches, 
and their doings are reported in all the papers; they are called 
leading citizens and pillars of the church. But don't you be 
called leading citizens, for the only useful man is the man who 
produces. (Applause). And whoever exalts himself shall be 
abased, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. 

Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Catholics, hypocrites! 
for you shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; you don't 
go in yourself and you don't let others go in. Woe unto you, 
doctors of divinity and Presbyterians, hypocrites! for you fore- 
close mortgages on widows' houses, and for a pretense you make 
long prayers. For this you will receive the greater damnation! 
Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Methodists, hypocrites! 
for you send missionaries to Africa to make one convert, and 
when you have made him, he is twice as much a child of hell 
as yourselves. (Applause). Woe unto you, blind guides, with 
your subtleties of doctrine, your transubstantiation and consub- 
stantiation and all the rest of it; you fools and blind! Woe unto 
you, doctors of divinity and Episcopalians, hypocrites! for you 
drop your checks into the collection-plate and you pay no heed 
to the really important things in the Bible, which are justice and 
mercy and faith in goodness. You blind guides, who strain at a 
gnat and swallow a camel! (Laughter). Woe unto you, doctors 
of divinity and Anglicans, hypocrites! for you bathe yourselves 
and dress in immaculate clothing but within you are full of ex- 
tortion and excess. You blind high churchmen, clean first your 
hearts, so that the clothes you wear may represent you. Woe 
unto you, doctors of divinity and Baptists, hjrpocrites! for you 
are like marble tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but 
inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so 



292 The Profits of Religion 

you appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy 
and iniquity. (Applause). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and 
Unitarians, hypocrites! because you erect statues to dead re- 
formers, and put wreathes upon the tombs of old-time martyrs. 
You say, if we had been alive in those days, we would not have 
helped to kill those good men. That ought to show you how to 
treat us at present. (Laughter). But you are the children of 
those who killed the good men; so go ahead and kill us too! You 
serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the dam- 
nation of hell ? 

At this point, according to the report published in 
the Jerusalem "Times'", a police sergeant stepped up to 
the orator and notified him that he was under arrest; 
he submitted quietly, but one of his followers attempted 
to use a knife, and was severely clubbed. Jesus was 
taken to the station-house followed by a riotous throng, 
and held upon a charge of disorderly conduct. Next 
morning the Rev. Dr. Caiaphas of Old Trinity appeared 
against him, and Magistrate Pilate sentenced him to six 
months on Blackwell's Island, remarking that from this 
time on he proposed to make an example of those soap- 
box orators who persist in using threatening and 
abusive language. Just as the prisoner was being led 
away, a detective appeared with a requisition from the 
Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francis- 
co, where he is under indictment for murder in the first 
degree, it being charged that his teachings helped to 
incite the Preparedness Day explosion. 

The Church Machine 

The Catholics of His time came to Jesus and said, 
"Master, we would have a sign of Thee" — meaning that 
they wanted him to do some magic, to prove to their 
vulgar minds that his power came from God. He an- 



The Profits of Religion 293 

swered by calling them an evil and adulterous genera- 
tion — which is exactly what I have said about the Papal 
machine. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyter- 
ians and other book-worshippers of his time accused 
him of violating the sacred commands so definitely set 
down in their ancient texts, and to them he answered 
that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for 
the Sabbath; he called them hypocrites, and quoted 
Karl Marx at them — "This people honoreth me with 
their lips, but their heart is far from me." Because he 
despised the company of the respectables, and went 
among the humble and human folk of his own class in 
the places where they gathered — the public houses — 
the churchly scandal-mongers called him "a man glut- 
tonous and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sin- 
ners" — ^precisely as in the old days they used to sneer 
at the Socialists for having their meetings in the back- 
rooms of saloons, and precisely as they still denounce 
us as free-lovers and atheists. 

But the longing for justice between man and man, 
which is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, is the deep- 
est instinct of the human heart, and the voice of the 
carpenter cannot be confined within the thickest 
church-walls, nor drowned by all the pealing organs 
in Christendom. Even in these days, when the power 
of Mammon is more widespread, more concentrated 
and more systematized than ever before in history — 
even in these days of Morgan and Rockefeller, there are 
Christian clergymen who dare to preach as Jesus 
preached. One by one they are cast out of the Church — 
Father McGlynn, George D. Herron, Alexander Irvine, 
J. Stitt Wilson, Austin Adams, Algernon Crapsey, 



294 The Profits of Religion 

Bouck White; but their voices are not silenced, they 
are like the leaven, to which Jesus compared the king- 
dom of God — a woman took it and hid it in three mea- 
sures of meal till the whole was leavened. The young 
theological students read, and some of them under- 
stand ; I know three brothers in one family who have 
just gone into the Church, and are preaching straight 
social revolution — and the scribes and the pharisees 
have not yet dared to cast them out. 

In this book I have portrayed the Christian Church 
as the servant and henchman of Big Business, a part of 
the system of Mammon. Every church is necessarily a 
money machine, holding and administering property. 
And it is not alone the Catholic Church which is in pol- 
itics, seeking favors from the state — the exemption of 
church property from taxation, exemption of ministers 
from military service, free transportation for them and 
their families on the railroads, the control of charity 
and education, laws to deprive people of amusements 
on Sunday — so on through a long list. As the churches 
have to be built with money, you find that in them 
the rich possess the control and demand the deference, 
while the poor are humble, and in their secret hearts 
jealous and bitter; in other words, the class struggle is 
in the churches, as everywhere else in the world, and 
the social revolution is coming in the churches, just as 
it is coming in industry. 

It is a fact of deep significance that the majority of 
ministers are proletarians, eking out their existence 
upon a miserable salary, and beholden in all their com- 
ings and goings to the wealthy holders of privilege. 
Even in the Roman Catholic Church that is true. The 



The Profits of Religion 295 

ordinary priest is a man of the working class, and 
knows what working people suffer and feel. So in the 
Catholic Church there are proletarian rebellions ; there 
is many a priest who does not carry out the political or- 
ders of his superiors, but goes to the polls and votes for 
his class instead of for his pope. In Ireland, as I write, 
the young priests are defying their bishops and joining 
the Sinn Fein, a non-religious movement for an Irish 
Kepublic. 

What is it that keeps the average workingman in 
subjection to the exploiter? Simply terror, the terror 
of losing his job. And if you could get into the inmost 
soul of Christian ministers, you would find that pre- 
cisely the same force is keeping many of them slaves to 
Tradition. They are educated men, and thousands of 
them must resent the dilemma which compels them to 
be either fools or hypocrites. They have caught enough 
of the spirit of their time not to enjoy having to pose as 
miracle-mongers, rain-makers and witch-doctors; they 
would like to say frankly that they do not believe that 
Jonah ever swallowed the whale, and even that they 
are dubious about Hercules and Achilles and other dem- 
igods. But they are part of a machine, and the old men 
and the rich men who run the machine have laid down 
the law. Those who find themselves tempted to think, 
remember suddenly that they have wives and children ; 
they have only one profession, they have been unfitted 
for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, ;as 
well as by the practice of altruism. 

But now the Social Revolution is coming; coming 
upon swift wings — it may be here before this book sees 
the light. And who knows but then we may see in 



296 The Promts of Religion 

America that wonderful sight which we saw in Russia, 
when Christian monks assembled and burned their holy- 
books, and petitioned the state to take them in as cit^ 
izens and human beings ? It is my belief that when the 
power of exploitation is broken, we shall see the Dead 
Hand crumble into dust, as a mummy crumbles when it 
is exposed to the air. All those men who stay in the 
Church and pretend to believe nonsense, because it af- 
fords an easy way to earn a living, will suddenly realize 
that it is possible to earn a living outside; that any 
man can go into a factory, clean and well-ventilated and 
humanly run, and by four hours work can earn the 
purchasing power of ten or fifteen dollars. Do you not 
think that there may be some who will choose freedom 
and self-respect on those terms ? 

And what of those thousands and tens of thousands 
who join the church because it is a part of the regime 
of respectability, a way to make the acquaintance of 
the rich, to curry favor and obtain promotion, to get 
customers if you are a tradesman, to extend your prac- 
tice if you are a professional man? And what about 
the millions who go to church because they are poor, 
and because life is a desperate struggle, and this is 
one way to keep the favor of the boss, to get a little 
better chance for the children, to get charity if you fall 
into need ; in short, to acquire influence with the well- 
to-do and powerful, who stand together, and like to see 
the poor humble and reverent, contented in that state 
of life to which it has pleased God to call them ? 

TLa Church Redeemed 

Do I mean that I expect to see the Church — all 



The Profits of Religion 297 

churches — ^perish and pass away? I do not, for I be- 
lieve that the Church answers one of the fundamental 
needs of man. The Social Revolution will abolish pov- 
erty and parasitism, it will make temptations fewer, 
and the souFs path through life much easier; but it 
will not remove the necessity of struggle for individual 
virtue, it will only clear the way for the discovery of 
newer and higher types of virtue. Men will gather more 
than ever in beautiful places to voice their love of life 
and of one another ; but the places in which they gather 
will be places swept clean of superstition and tyranny. 
As the Reformation compelled the Catholic Church to 
cleanse itself and abolish the grossest of its abuses, so 
the Social Revolution will compel it to repudiate its 
defense of parasitism and exploitation. I will record 
the prophecy that by the year 1950 all Catholic author- 
ities will be denying that the Church ever opposed 
Socialism — true Socialism; just as today they deny 
that the Church ever tortured Galileo, ever burned 
men for teaching that the earth moves around the sun, 
ever sold the right to commit crime, ever gave away the 
New World to Spain and Portugal, ever buried newly- 
born infants in the cellars of nunneries. 

The Social Revolution will compel all churches, 
Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian, or what you 
will, to drive out their formalists and traditionalists. If 
there is any church that refuses so to adapt itself, the 
swift progress of enlightenment and freedom will leave 
it without followers. But in the great religions, which 
have a soul of goodness and sincerity, we may be sure 
that reformers will arise, prophets and saints who, as of 
old, will preach the living word of God. In many 



298 The Profits of Religion 

churches today we can see the beginning of that new 
Counter-Reformation. Even in the Catholic Church 
there is a "modernist" rebellion ; read the books of the 
"Sillon", and Fogazzaro's trilogy of novels, "The 
Saint", and you will see a genuine and vital protest 
against the economic corruption of the Church. In 
America, the "Knights of Slavery" have been forced by 
public pressure to support a "War for Democracy", and 
even to compete with the Y. M. C. A. in the training 
camps. They are doing good work, I am told. 

This gradual conquest of the old religiosity by the 
spirit of modern common sense is shown most interest- 
ingly in the Salvation Army. William Booth was a man 
with a great heart, who took his life into his hands and 
went out with a bass-drum to save the lost souls of the 
slums. He was stoned and jailed, but he persisted, and 
brought his captives to Jesus — 

Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, 
Unwashed legions with the ways of death. 

Incidentally the "General" learned to know his slum 
population. He had not wanted to engage in charity 
and material activities; he feared hypocrisy and cor- 
ruption. But in his writings he lets us see how utterly 
impossible it is for a man of real heart to do anything 
for the souls of the slum-dwellers without at the same 
time helping their diseased and hunger-racked bodies. 
So the Salvation army was forced into useful work- — old 
clothes depots, nights lodgings, Christmas dinners, 
farm colonies — until today the bare list of the various 
kinds of enterprises it carries on fills three printed 
pages. It is all done with the money of the rich, and is 
tainted by subservience to authority, but no one can 



The Profits of Religion 299 

deny that it is better than "Gibson's Preservative", 
and the fox-hunting parsons filling themselves with 
port. 

And in Protestant Churches the advance has been 
even greater. Here and there you will find a real rebel, 
hanging onto his job and preaching the proletarian 
Jesus ; while even the great Fifth Avenue churches are 
making attempts at "missions" and "settlements" in 
the slums. The more vital churches are gradually turn- 
ing themselves into societies for the practical better- 
ment of their members. Their clergy are running boys 
clubs and sewing-schools for girls, food conservation 
lectures for mothers, social study clubs for men. You 
get prayer-meetings and psalm-singing along with this ; 
but here is the fact that hangs always before the 
clergyman's face — that with prayer-meetings and 
psalm-singing alone he has a hard time, while with 
clubs and educational societies and social reforms he 
thrives. 

And now the War has broken upon the world, and 
caught the churches, like everything else, in its mighty 
current ; the clergy and the congregations are confront- 
ed by pressing national needs, they are forced to take 
notice of a thousand new problems, to engage in a thou- 
sand practical activities. No one can see the end of this 
— any more than he can see the end of the vast up- 
heaval in politics and industry. But we who are trained 
in revolutionary thought can see the main outlines of 
the future. We see that in these new church activities 
the clergy are inspired by things read, not in ancient 
Hebrew texts, but in the daily newspapers. They are 
responding to the actual, instant needs of their boys in 



300 The Profits of Religion 

the trenches and the camps ; and this is bound to have 
an effect upon their psychology. Just as we can say 
that an English girl who leaves the narrow circle of 
her old life, and goes into a munition factory and joins 
a union and takes part in its debates, will never after 
be a docile home-slave ; so we can say that the clergy- 
man who helps in Y. M. C. A. work in France, or in Red 
Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot 
and formalist forever after. He will have learned, in 
spite of himself, to adjust means to ends; he will have 
learned co-operation and social solidarity by the method 
which modern educators most favor — by doing. Also 
he will have absorbed a mass of ideas in news des- 
patches from over the world. He is forced to read these 
despatches carefully, because the fate of his own boys 
is involved ; and we Socialists will see to it that the des- 
patches are well filled with propaganda ! 

The Desire of Nations 

So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are 
caught in the great revolutionary current, and swept on 
towards a goal which they do not forsee, and from 
which they would shrink in dismay : the Church of the 
future, the Church redeemed by the spirit of Brotheiv 
hood, the Church which we Socialists will join. They 
call us materialists, and say that we think about noth- 
ing but the belly — and that is true, in a way ; because 
we are the representatives of a starving class, which 
thinks about its belly precisely as does any individual 
who is ravening with hunger. But give us what that 
arrant materialist, James, the brother of Jesus, calls 
"those things which are needful to the body," and then 



The Profits of Religion 301 

we will use our minds, and even discover that we have 
souls ; whereas at present we are led to despise the very- 
word "spiritual", which has become the stock-in-trade 
of parasites and poseurs. 

We have children, whom we love, and whose future 
is precious to us. We would be glad to have them 
trained in ways of decency and self-control, of dignity 
and grace. It would make us happy if there were in the 
world institutions conducted by men and women of con- 
secrated life who would specialize in teaching a true 
morality to the young. But it must be a morality of 
freedom, not of slavery ; a morality founded upon rea- 
son, not upon superstition. The men who teach it must 
be men who know what truth is, and the passionate 
loyalty which the search for truth inspiries. They can- 
not be the pitiful shufflers and compromisers we see in 
the churches today, the Jowetts who say they used to 
believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 
Rather than trust our children to such shameless cyn- 
ics, we will make shift to train them ourselves — ^we am- 
ateurs, not knowing much about children, and absorbed 
in the desperate struggle against organized wrong. 

It is a statement which many revolutionists 
would resent, yet it is a fact nevertheless, that we need 
a new religion, need it just as badly as any of the rest 
of our pitifully groping race. That we need it is proven 
by the rivalries and quarrels in our midst — ^the schisms 
which waste the greater part of our activities, and 
which are often the result of personal jealousies and 
petty vanities. To lift men above such weakness, to 
make them really brothers in a great cause — that is the 



302 The Profits of Religion 

work of "personal religion" in the true and vital sense 
of the words. 

We pioneers and propagandists may not live to see 
the birth of the new Church of Humanity ; but our chil- 
dren will see it, and the dream of it is in our hearts ; 
our poets have sung of it with fervor and conviction. 
Read these lines from "The Desire of Nations," by Ed- 
win Markham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer 
who is at hand: 

And when he comes into the world gone wrong. 
He will rebuild her beauty with a song. 
To every heart he will its own dream be: 
One moon has many phantoms in the sea. 
Out of the North the noms will cry to men: 

"Baldur the Beautiful has come again!" 
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead: 

"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head I" 
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice: 

"Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!" 
And social architects who build the State, 
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate. 
Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum. 
And glad quick cries will go from man to man: 

"Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan, 
The King who loved the lilies. He has come I" 

The Knowable 

The new religion will base itself upon the facts of 
life, as demonstrated by experience and reason ; for to 
the modern thinker the basis of all interest is truth, and 
the wonders of the microscope and the telescope, of the 
new psychology and the new sociology are more won- 
derful than all the magic recorded in ancient Mythol- 
ogies. And even if this were not so, the business of the 
thinker is to follow the facts. The history of all philos-^. 



The Profits of Religion 303 

ophy might be summed up in this simile: The infant 
opens his eyes and sees the moon, and stretches out his 
hands and cries for it ; but those in charge do not give 
it to him, and so after a while the infant tires of crying, 
and turns to his mother's breast and takes a drink of 
milk. 

Man demands to know the origin of life ; it is intol- 
erable for him to be here, and not know how, or whence, 
or why. He demands the knowledge immediately and 
finally, and invents innumerable systems and creeds. 
He makes himself believe them, with fire and torture 
makes other men believe them ; until finally, in the con- 
fusion of a million theories, it occurs to him to investi- 
gate his instruments, and he makes the discovery that 
his tools are inadequate, and all their products worth- 
less. His mind is finite, while the thing he seeks is in- 
finite ; his knowledge is relative, while the First Cause 
is absolute. 

This realization we owe to Immanuel Kant, the 
father of modern philosophy. In his famous "antin- 
omies", he proved four propositions: first, that the 
universe is limitless in time and space; second, that 
matter is composed of simple, indivisible elements; 
third, that free will is impossible; and fourth, that 
there must be an absolute or first cause. And having 
proven these things, he turned round and proved their 
opposites, with arguments exactly as unanswerable. 
Any one who follows these demonstrations and under- 
stands them, takes all his metaphysical learning and 
lays it on the shelf with his astrology and magic. 

It is a fact, which every one who wishes to think 
must get clear, that when you are dealing with abso- 



304 The Profits of Religion 

lutes and ultimates, you can prove whatever you want 
to prove. Metaphysics is Hke the fourth dimension; 
you fly into it and come back upside down, hindside 
foremost, inside out; and when you get tired of this 
condition, you take another flight, and come back the 
way you were before. So metaphysical thinking serves 
the purpose of Catholic cheats like Cardinal Newman 
and Professor Chatterton-Hill ; it serves hysterical 
women like "Mother" Eddy; it serves the New- 
thoughters, who wish to fill their bellies with wind ; it 
serves the charlatans and mystagogs who wish to be- 
fuddle the wits of the populace. Real thinkers avoid 
it as they would a bottomless swamp; they avoid, not 
merely the idealism of Platonists and Hegelians, but 
the monism of Haeckel, and the materialism of Buech- , 
ner and Jacques Loeb. The simple fact is that it is as 
impossible to prove the priority of origin and the ulti- 
mate nature of matter as it is of mind; so that the 
scientist who lays down a materialist dogma is exactly 
as credulous as a Christian. 

How then are we to proceed? Shall we erect the 
mystery into an Unknowable, like Spencer, and call 
ourselves Agnostics with a capital letter, like Huxley ? 
Shall we follow Frederic Harrison, making an inade- 
quate divinity out of our impotence? I have read the 
books of the "Positivists", and attended their imitation 
church in London, but I did not get any satisfaction 
from them. In the midst of their dogmatic pronounce- 
ments I found myself remembering how the egg falls 
apart and reveals a chicken, how the worm suddenly 
discovers itself a butterfly. The spirit of man is a 
breaker of barriers, and it seems a futile occupation to 



The Profits of Religion 305 

set limits upon the future. Our business is not to say 
what men will know ten thousand years from now, but 
to content ourselves with the simple statement of what 
men know now. What we know is a procession of phe- 
nomena called an environment ; our life being an act of 
adjustment to its changes, and our faith being the con- 
viction that this adjustment is possible and worth 
while. 

In the beginning the guide is instinct, and the act 
of trust is automatic. But with the dawn of reason the 
thinker has to justify his faith; to convince himself 
that life is sincere, that there is wojth-whileness in be- 
ing, or in seeking to be ; that there is order in creation, 
laws which can be discovered, processes which can be 
applied. Just as the babe trusts life when it gropes for 
its mother's breast, so the most skeptical of scientists 
trusts it when he declares that water is made of two 
parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets it down 
for a certainty that this will always be so — ^that he is 
not being played with by some sportive demon, who 
will today cause H20 to behave like water, and tomor- 
row like benzine. 

Nature's Insurgent Son 

Life has laws, which it is possible to ascertain ; and 
with each bit of knowledge acquired, the environment 
is changed, the life becomes a new thing. Consider, for 
example, what a different place the world became to 
the man who discovered that the force which laid the 
forest in ashes could be tamed and made to warm a 
cave and make wild grains nutritious ! In other words, 
man can create life, he can make the world and him- 

20 



306 The Profits of Religion 

self into that which his reason decides it ought to be. 
The means by which he does this is the most magical 
of all the tools he has invented since his arboreal an- 
cestor made the first club; the tool of experimental 
science — and when one considers that this weapon has 
been understood and deliberately employed for but two 
or three centuries, he realizes that we are indeed only 
at the beginning of human evolution. 

To take command of life, to replace instincts by rea- 
soned and deliberate acts, to make the world a con- 
scious and ordered product — ^that is the task of man. 
Sir Ray Lankester has set this forth with beautiful 
precision in his book, "The Kingdom of Man". We are, 
at this time, in an uncomfortable and dangerous tran- 
sition stage, as a child playing with explosives. This 
child has found out how to alter his environment in 
many startling ways, but he does not yet know why he 
wishes to alter it, nor to what purpose. He finds that 
certain things are uncomfortable, and these he proceeds 
immediately to change. Discovering that grain fer- 
mented dispels boredom, he creates a race of drunk- 
ards; discovering that foods can be produced in pro- 
fusion, and prepared in alluring combinations, he makes 
himself so many diseases that it takes an encyclopedia 
to tell about them. Discovering that captives taken in 
war can be made to work, he makes a procession of em- 
pires, which are eaten through with luxury and cor- 
ruption, and fall into ruins again. 

This is Nature's way; she produces without limit, 
groping blindly, experimenting ceaselessly, eliminating 
ruthlessly. It takes a million eggs to produce one 
salmon ; it has taken a million million men to produce 



The Profits of Religion 307 

one idea — algebra, or the bow and arrow, or democracy. 
Nature's present impulse appears as a rebellion against 
her own methods ; man, her creature, will emancipate 
himself from her law, will save himself from her blind- 
ness and her ruthlessness. He is "Nature's insurgent 
son"; but, being the child of his mother, goes at the 
task in her old blundering way. Some men are sched- 
uled to elimination because of defective eyesight ; they 
are furnished with glasses, and the breeding of defec- 
tive eyes begins. The sickly or imbecile child would per- 
ish at once in the course of Nature ; it is saved in the 
name of charity, and a new line of degenerates is 
started. 

What shall we do? Return to the method of the 
Spartans, exposing our sickly infants ? We do not have 
to do anything so wasteful, because we can replace the 
killing of the unfit by a scientific breeding which 
will prevent the unfit from getting a chance at life. 
We can replace instinct by self -discipline. We can sub- 
stitute for the regime of "Nature red in tooth and claw 
with ravin" the regime of man the creator, knowing 
what he wishes to be and how to set about to be it. 
Whether this can happen, whether the thing which 
we call civilization is to be the great triumph of the 
ages, or whether the human race is to go back into the 
melting pot, is a question being determined by an infin- 
itude of contests between enlightenment and ignor- 
ance : precisely such a contest as occurs now, when you, 
the reader, encounter a man who has thought his way 
out to the light, and comes to urge you to perform the 
act of self -emancipation, to take up the marvellous new 
tools of science, and to make yourself, by means of 



308 The Profits of Religion 

exact knowledge, the creator of your own life and in 
part of the life of the race. 

The New Morality 

Life is a process of expansion, of the unfoldment of 
new powers; driven by that inner impulse which the 
philosophers of Pragmatism call the elan vital. When- 
ever this impulse has its way, there is an emotion of 
joy; whenever it is balked, there is one of distress. So 
pleasure and pain are the guides of life, and the final 
goal is a condition of free and constantly accelerating 
growth, in which joy is enduring. 

That man will ever reach such a state is more than 
we can say. It is a perfectly conceivable thing that to- 
morrow a comet may fall upon the earth and wipe out 
all man's labor's. But on the other hand, it is a conceiv- 
able thing that man may some day learn to control the 
movements of comets, and even of starry systems. It 
seems certain that if he is given time, he will make him- 
self master of the forces of his immediate environ- 
ment — 

The untamed giants of nature shall bow down — 
The tides, the tempest and the lightning cease 
From mockery and destruction, and be turned 
Unto the making of the soul of man. 

It is a conceivable thing that man may learn to cre- 
ate his food from the elements without the slow pro- 
cesses of agriculture; it is conceivable that he may 
master the bacteria which at present prey upon his 
body, and so put an end to death. It is certain that he 
will ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human 
qualities as he has created the spurs of the fighting- 
cock and the legs of the greyhound. He will find out 



The Profits of Religion 309 

what genius is, and the laws of its being, and the tests 
whereby it may be recognized. In the new science of 
psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of 
bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light 
of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy 
which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is 
beginning to grope his way into a universal conscious- 
ness, which may come to include the joys and griefs 
of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which 
the spectroscope and the telescope are disclosing. 

All these are fascinating possibilities. What stands 
in the way of their realization? Ignorance and super- 
stition, fear and submission, the old habits of rapine 
and hatred which man has brought with him from his 
animal past. These make him a slave, a victim of him- 
self and of others ; to root them out of the garden of the 
soul is the task of the modern thinker. 

The new morality is thus a morality of freedom. It 
teaches that man is the master, or shall become so; 
that there is no law, save the law of his own being, no 
check upon his will save that which he himself im- 
poses. 

The new morality is a morality of joy. It teaches 
that true pleasure is the end of being, and the test of 
all righteousness. 

The new morality is a morality of reason. It teaches 
that there is no authority above reason ; no possibility 
of such authority, because if such were to appear, rea- 
son would have to judge it, and accept or reject it. 

The new morality is a morality of development. It 
teaches that there can no more be an immutable law of 
conduct, than there can be an immutable position for 



310 The Profits of Religion 

the steering-wheel of an aeroplane. The business of the 
pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine aloft amid 
shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist is 
to adjust life to a constantly changing environment. 
An action which was suicide yesterday becomes hero- 
ism today, and futility or hypocrisy tomorrow. 

This new morality, like all things in a w^orld of 
strife, is fighting for existence, using its own weapons, 
which are reason and love. Obviously it can use no 
others, without self-destruction; yet it has to meet 
enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and 
fraud. Whether it will prevail is more than any prophet 
can say. Perhaps it is too much to ask that it should 
succeed — this insolent effort of the pigmy man to leap 
upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into his 
mouth. Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds 
of a few, the scientists and poets and inventors, the 
dreamers of the race. Perhaps the nerve of the pigmy 
will fail him at the critical moment, and he will fall 
from the back of his master, and under his master's 
hoofs. 

The hour of the decision is now ; for this we can see 
plainly, and as scientists we can proclaim it — ^the 
human race is in a swift current of degeneration, 
which a new morality alone can check. The struggle is 
at its height in our time ; if it fails, if the fibre of the 
race continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to 
be eaten out by poverty and luxury, by insanity and 
disease, by prostitution, crime and war — ^then mankind 
will slip back into the abyss, the untamed giants of 
Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, 
the tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth 



The Profits of Religion 311 

clean again. I do not believe that this calamity will 
befall us. I know that in the diseased social body the 
forces of resistance are gathering — the Socialist move- 
ment, in the broad sense — ^the activities of all who be- 
lieve in the possibility of reconstructing society upon 
a basis of reason, justice and love. To such people this 
book goes out : to the truly religious people, those who 
hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now, 
who believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing 
to bear pain and ridicule and privation for the sake of 
its ultimate achievement. 

From the edge of harsh derision, 

From discord and defeat, 
From doubt and lame division. 

We pluck the fruit and eat; 
And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet .... 
O sorrowing hearts of slaves, 

We heard you beat from far! 
We bring the light that saves, 

We bring the morning star; 
Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things 
are 

Envoi 

I have come to the end of my task ; but one question 
troubles me. I think of the "young men and maidens 
meek" who will read this book, and I wonder what they 
will make of it. We have had a lark together ; we have 
gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting 
every venerable head that showed itself, beating the 
dust out of ancient delusions. You would like all your 
life to be that kind of lark; but you may not find it so, 
and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vex- 
ation. 



312 The Profits of Religion 

I have known hundreds of young radicals in my Hf e ; 
they have nearly all been gallant and honest, but they 
have not all been wise, and therefore not so happy as 
they might have been. In the course of time I have 
formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals 
are exposed. We see so much that is wrong in ancient 
things, it gets to be a habit with us to reject them. 
We have only to know that a thing is old to feel an 
impulse of impatient scorn ; on the other hand, we are 
tempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to 
be unprecedented. There is a common type of radical 
whose aim in life is to be several jumps ahead of man- 
kind; whose criterion of conduct is that it shocks the 
bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may find 
him — and her — in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, 
drinking the newest red chemicals, smoking the 
newest brand of cigarettes, and discussing the newest 
form of psycopathia sexualis. After you have watched 
them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people 
have fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, 
the non sequitur, and likewise to the oldest form of 
slavery, which is self-indulgence. 

If it is true that much in the old moral codes is 
based upon ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is 
also true that much in the old moral codes is based upon 
facts which will not change so long as man is what he 
is — a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and fool- 
ish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice 
between these impulses; so long as he is a material 
body and a personal consciousness, obliged to live in so- 
ciety and adjust himself to the rights of others. What 
I would like to say to young radicals — if there is any 



The Profits of Religion 313 

way to say it without seeming a prig — is that in choos- 
ing their own path through life, they will need not 
merely enthusiasm and radical fervor, but wisdom and 
judgment and hard study. 

It is our fundamental demand that society shall 
cease to repeat over and over the blunders of the past, 
the blunders of tyranny and slavery, of luxury and pov- 
erty, which wrecked the ancient societies; and surely 
it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own per- 
sons the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To 
light the fires of lust in our hearts, and let them 
smoulder there, and imagine we are trying new experi- 
ments in psychology! Who does not know the radical 
woman who demonstrates her emancipation from con- 
vention by destroying her nerves with nicotine? Who 
does not know the genius of revolt who demonstrates 
his repudiation of private property by permitting his 
lady loves to support him ? Who does not know the man 
who finds in the phrases of revolution the most effective 
devices for the seducing of young girls ? 

You will have read this book to ill purpose if you 
draw the conclusion that there is anything in it to 
spare you the duty of getting yourself moral standards 
and holding yourself to them. On the contrary, because 
your task is the highest and hardest that man has yet 
undertaken — ^for this reason you will need standards 
the most exacting ever formulated. Let me quote some 
words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding to 
the slave-moralities : 

Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I 
hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke. 
Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke ? 



314 The Profits of Religion 

Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall 
your eye tell me: free to what? 

Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang 
thy will above thee as thy law ? Canst thou be thine own judge, 
and avenger of thy law ? 

Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of 
thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into the 
icy breath of isolation. 

Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge 
into the sunlight of knowledge, to take control of a 
world, and to make it over, not according to the will 
of any gods, but according to the law in our own hearts. 
For that task we have need of all the resources of our 
being; of courage and high devotion, of faith in our- 
selves and our comrades, of clean, straight thinking, of 
discipline both of body and mind. We go to this task 
with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of 
mankind — the knowledge that our actions determine 
the future of life, not merely for ourselves but for all 
the race. For this is one of the laws of the ancient He- 
brews which modern science has not repealed, but on 
the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirma- 
tions — that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
children unto the third and fourth generations. 

I get letters from the readers of my books ; nearly 
always they are young people, so I feel like the father 
of a large family. I gather them now about my knee, 
and pronounce upon them a benediction in the ancient 
patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my 
hopes, for ages men suffered and fought, so that 
the world might be turned over to you. Now the day 
is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with the 
shining of its wings ; it is coming so swiftly that I am 



The Profits of Religion 315 

afraid of it. I thought we should have more time to get 
ready for the taking over of the world! But the old 
managers of it went insane, they took to tearing each 
other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So, 
whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the 
world ; we have to decide what to do with it, even while 
we are doing it. Let us not fail, young comrades ; let us 
not write on the scroll of history that mankind had to 
go through yet new generations of wars and tumults 
and enslavements, because the youth of the interna- 
tional revolution could not lift themselves above those 
ancient personal vices which wrecked the fair hopes of 
their fathers — bigotry and intolerance, vindictiveness 
and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all unchar- 
itableness ! 



Reader: 

For twenty years I have been haunted by the 
dream that I might some day be my own publisher. 
I was waiting till I could afford the luxury; but 
many a man has put off a bold action till he died, 
so I am publishing this book without being able 
to afford it. 

The reason is that I do not want to be a writer 
for the rich. I want to be read by working-boys 
and girls, and by poor students. 

I offer the book at a low price. In the hope of 
tempting you to go out and get your friends to 
read it, I have made a price in quantities which 
will allow no profit at all. A margin has been 
figured to cover postage, stationery, circulars, and 
the cost of a clerical assistant; but nothing for 
interest on capital, which is a gift, nor for the rent 
of an office, which is my home, nor for the services 
of manager and press agent, which is myself. 

You have read the book, and its fate is yours 
to decide. If it seems worth while, pass it on to 
some on else. If you can afford it, order a number 
of copies and give them away. If you can't af- 
ford it, give your time and be a book-agent. 



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